


Like Ships in the Night

by halfsoursaffitz



Category: Bon Appétit Test Kitchen (Web Series), Bon Appétit Test Kitchen RPF
Genre: F/M, Major Denial, Slow Burn, Through the Years, touch of reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:14:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21685084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfsoursaffitz/pseuds/halfsoursaffitz
Summary: Claire didn’t easily give away her heart. But it was missing from her now, even though she’d never reached into her chest, carved it out, laid it on a silver platter, and bestowed it to another.It had been missing from her for years.Brad had made it his own the day he met her.//A Brad and Claire through the years story.
Relationships: Brad Leone & Claire Saffitz, Brad Leone/Claire Saffitz
Comments: 22
Kudos: 123





	Like Ships in the Night

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys! This was supposed to be just one scene but it snowballed into a novella, whoopsies. It turned into a One Day/Love Rosie inspired across the years doodad. This is my first RPF so go easy on me!
> 
> I’m adding a disclaimer here that this AU is more reflective of reality than usual — some partners are referenced and briefly brought in, but this is still very much an AU. I’m not speculating on real life, this is all just fiction in my head. In my next AUs I’ll probably just go for the standard of having them both single, solely because writing this level of angst was exhausting for me.
> 
> Also, usual fight club rules apply. Don't let this shit see the light of day anywhere else on the internet. Let's not make it weird, please.
> 
> Bingo bango bongo and happy reading, friends!

* * *

#  _Summer, 2014_

Claire frowned down at the recipe she was testing, pushing her freshly-dyed black strands away from her sweating face. The heat index outside was 102, and the air conditioning in the test kitchen was struggling hard to keep up. All of the ovens were in use, making everyone else in the room roast alongside their dishes. 

A bead of perspiration slid down her temple, over her jaw, and trickled down her neck. The recipe she was testing needed a heavy edit, but she just wanted to go home, strip down, lay next to a fan, and watch _Jeopardy_ reruns. She was tired of trying to perfect something that the author clearly hadn’t cared about that much in the first place. 

She’d been testing recipes for over a year now, making them better, making them easier to follow for the average home cook. But she hadn’t been allowed to write her own, to _create_ , and the restriction was beginning to chafe at her -- badly. 

Shaking her head, she aggressively crossed out “2 tablespoons almond extract” and scribbled in “1 teaspoon almond extract” in her own loopy scrawl in the margins. 

“2 _tablespoons_? That woulda been revolting,” a booming voice startled her out of her skin, accompanied by a childish noise of disgust. Two incredibly large, tan hands danced across the countertop next to her, drumming out a senseless beat.

Heart still pounding, Claire lifted her eyes in shock, and then lifted them some more. A man in a plain white t-shirt and a backwards baseball cap stared down at her in amusement, shooting her a toothy grin. Stubble shaded his cheeks, only a couple shades darker than his tanned skin, which made his light blue eyes stand out all the more. 

He had to be at least a foot taller than her.

“Uh, I’m sorry, are you..?” Claire trailed off, suddenly hyper-aware of another bead of sweat dripping down the side of her face.

“It’s like one giant oven in here now, ain’t it?” He said cheerfully, seemingly unfazed by the heat. “Sorry for scaring ya. Didn’t mean to be rude. I’m Brad, Brad Leone. One of the interns. Your friendly neighborhood errand boy, more or less. If you need a freshly scrubbed pan or a restock on shallots, I’m your guy.”

Her heart rate finally back to normal, Claire snorted a chuckle. “You’re way, _way_ too big to be a house elf.” She dusted her hands on her apron, hoping they weren’t clammy as she extended her arm for a handshake. “I’m Claire.”

“Yeah, I know,” he smiled, accepting the handshake. Her fingers all but disappeared inside his. His hand had the dry, almost chalky feeling that one gets from washing way too many dishes by hand. Claire thanked the culinary gods that she’d made it past that point in her career.

She noticed a faint sheen of sweat across his brow, and suddenly felt a little better about her own disheveled appearance.

“So, whatcha doin’?” He asked, looming over her shoulder, his eyes scanning the recipe she was testing. “Almond torte? Wow, that’s a lotta sugar,” he shook his head. “Sugar is literally poison, ya know. Eat too much and it slowly kills you.”

Claire craned her neck to look up at him, biting back a mocking smile. “I think anything would kill you slowly if you ate too much of it.”

Brad folded his arms across his chest. “Nah, some stuff will kill ya real _fast_ if you eat it. Like rhubarb leaves. Don’t eat the leaves, Claire.” He mimed a slit throat, sticking out his tongue.

Claire resisted the urge to laugh again. Who was this guy? Where did he come from, and was he even real? And why was he so _big?_

“I’m trying to correct this recipe, but between you and me, the whole thing just needs to be scrapped and begun again.” She tapped her pen anxiously against the counter, dreading the part where she’d have go mix up the ingredients and actually test this torte that she was pretty convinced would be doomed. 

He studied the recipe sheet, scanning all of her cross-outs and scribbles. “Looks like you’re pretty frustrated with it. Y’know, I’m outta dishes to wash. What if you took a break and I worked through this for you for a little while?”

Tired, sweaty, and restless, Claire was aching for a break. She was surprised at how easily he’d picked up on her mood. But she had no idea who this guy was, or if he’d ever baked a cake in his life.

“I mean, have you ever worked pastry before? It goes to hell in a handbasket pretty fast if you don’t know what you’re doing.” 

He shrugged. “I have a little bit, yeah. I think I’m pretty comfortable with the chemistry of it all. Here, listen. If I totally bungle it, feel free to never accept my help with anything ever again. It won’t hurt my feelings. I mean, it might a little bit, but we’re makin’ a deal here, and I’m a man of my word.”

Claire gazed up at him, at his open, charming expression, at the soft hair that curled wildly around his ears and the flush that the hot kitchen had drawn to his cheeks. 

She’d met him less than five minutes ago. She had no reason to trust him, none at all.

But she found that somehow, she already did.

“Deal,” she exclaimed, and he shook her hand once more.

As she walked away and headed toward the office area next door, she could hear him whistling, his pitch off and the tune inscrutable.

She smiled.

Two hours later, after she’d finished her lunch and filled out orders she’d need for recipe testing next week, she tiptoed back into the test kitchen, curious to see what Brad had done. 

Across the room, he stood towering over her bench, studying the cooling rack in front of him thoughtfully as he wiped his sweaty brow with a bunched-up towel.

“Oh hey,” he called, the volume of his voice louder than it needed to be -- a fact that he seemed entirely oblivious to. “I tweaked the ingredients a little more after you left and I figured I’d go ahead and do a test bake. It should be almost cool now, you wanna taste it with me?”

As Claire drew closer, her eyes widened. Somehow, in some twisted, unfathomable trick of the universe, the torte cooling on the rack in front of him looked flawless, the flaked almonds on top toasted to perfection and magazine-cover-ready. 

“Brad…” she began, shaking her head incredulously. “It looks really, really good.” 

“Well gee, Claire, thanks,” he said genuinely, tapping his foot against the tile floor. “But ya haven’t even tried it yet.”

She bypassed the plates, knowing they’d be useless, and grabbed two forks from a drawer, fanning her face with the neck of her scoop-neck t-shirt as she went. 

“Okay, okay, okay, let’s try it together at the same time,” he said as he plucked a fork from her hand. “You ready? One, two, three…”

Claire scraped the bite off the fork with her teeth, letting the dense, moist, crumbly texture of the bake sit on her tongue for a second or two before she started chewing. It was infuriatingly perfect: her taste buds relished in the genius balance between nuttiness and sweetness, savoring the soft, yet substantial texture of the crumb. 

“Brad,” she said in a low voice, “what did you _do_?”

His own smile faltered slightly. “Oh, you don’t like it?” He rubbed a hand absentmindedly over the top of his cap. “Well, I substituted the extract out for almond paste instead, and changed from plain to cake flour, but I can see where that might have made it too dense-”

Claire held up a hand to stop him. “No, no, that’s not what I meant. I _love_ it, Brad. It’s stunning. I can’t believe you not only salvaged that recipe, but perfected it. It’s really, _really_ good.”

Brad’s lips turned up again, sheepishly this time. “Ah, stop it. You’re gonna give me a big head. My hat won’t be able to fit anymore. Guess this means I win my end of the deal though, huh?” 

Claire returned his smile. “You definitely did. Seriously, I’m blown away. Feel free to come help me out any time.”

“It’d be my pleasure,” he said, his voice intentionally goofy as he tipped his hat to her. He twirled his fork around flippantly in his right hand, never quite standing still. 

Struck by a new curiosity, Claire sneaked a brief glance at his other hand. 

There was no wedding band on his ring finger. 

Despite herself, a bubble of hope began to well in her chest.

… 

As summer crested and began to wane into fall, Brad slowly shifted out of dishwashing duties and began more and more work with Claire, helping her test recipes and keeping on top of all the test ingredient orders. Claire began to get used to him in the kitchen to the point that days without him didn’t feel right. He always seemed to be _right there_ when she turned her head, opening every door imaginable for her, giving her recipe feedback without ever making her feel bad about herself, giving her ideas she never would have come up with herself -- and all of it always with a smile. He radiated this benevolent, chaotic energy at all times, infecting her with laughter and boosting her self esteem. She’d never met anyone closer to the human equivalent of a golden retriever dog. He’d become one of the constants in her days -- she’d wake up, eat a bagel, hate navigating through the tourists in Times Square to get to work, and she’d get into the kitchen with Brad, and she could finally breathe again. He intuitively knew her moods, her frustrations, and was able to counter them in an easy way that no one else ever had before. 

Claire didn’t easily give away her heart. It took a lot of work for her to get to know someone, to sync her feelings with theirs, to trust them. 

But with Brad, it never felt like work at all. It had just _happened._ It was new, uncharted territory.

It was like two puzzle pieces locking into place.

Claire frowned to herself as she kneaded bread dough, her neck and shoulders aching. Whoever had written the recipe had gotten the ratios completely off, and it was taking her hours to find the proper measurements and correct consistency. The kitchen was too loud to be this early in the morning, and the longer Claire worked with her dough, the more her mood soured. 

“Brad?” she finally called out in frustration, sloughing the dough off her hands. 

“Whatcha got, Saffitz?” He bounced around to her side of the counter like some kind of Jersey-born, overgrown Tigger. 

Claire groaned. “Brad, do you think you could help me knead this for a while? The stand mixer is broken and if I do this for another second I will lose my goddamn mind.”

“Yeah, yeah. You got it,” he agreed readily. “I’m gonna have to ask you to step away from the bench,” he announced, doing his best NYPD impression. “Step _away_ from the bench please.”

Backing away, Claire rolled her neck, wincing as it cracked with stiffness. 

“Oof, why don’t you relax for a bit, huh?” Before she could respond, he shuffled up behind her, wrapping his long, warm hands over her trapezius muscles where her shoulders met her neck and giving them a gentle squeeze. “Geez, Claire, you’re tense as a hunting bow. It’s okay to relax a bit. Relax your shoulder muscles for me.”

His fingertips rested just near her collarbone, and heat flooded her ears at the thought of him being able to feel her elevated heartbeat under his touch.

“I am relaxed,” Claire answered, her eyes falling shut. And she thought she was. It’s not like she was intentionally tensing her shoulder muscles or anything. She wasn’t. 

Brad huffed out a small chuckle. “You’re really not, Claire. You prob’ly don’t even realize it. Just try it, try dropping your shoulders. Ease up on your posture.”

Concentrating, Claire exhaled, letting her arms droop a bit, surprised to find that her muscles really had been tensed after all. 

Maybe tense was just her resting state. 

“There ya go,” he praised in a low voice, rolling the tips of his thumbs lightly near the base of her neck, massaging without hurting her like every other professional masseuse seemed to. She felt his breath on the back of her neck as he spoke, and the hair on her arms prickled.

She imagined what it would feel like to have his lips quiet instead, pressing against the soft place beneath her ear.

And then his hands were gone, their gentle weight vanishing from her shoulders. She mourned the loss.

“Let me knead this for ya for a while, don’t worry about it,” he reassured, leaning over her counter and flouring his hands. “I could use the practice anyways.”

Claire’s eyes were drawn like a dark tide to his profile as he took up the work she was too tired to finish. Sandy eyelashes, strong nose, the stubble of his cheeks, a mouth pulled into a perpetual smile. 

A beam of sunshine in her life that she hadn’t known she needed.

“Nice haircut, Brad,” Carla called from the doorway, tucking her purse away into a cubby and shrugging out of her jacket. “You really clean up well.”

Brad shrugged humbly, still working the dough in front of him. “Eh, I didn’t mind it too much, but my girlfriend doesn’t like when it gets too long.”

Girlfriend?

_Girlfriend._

The single word deflated Claire like a pin puncturing a balloon.

Her heart plummeted like a stone into the pit of her stomach. 

God, she’d been stupid. Him not having a ring didn’t mean anything. And him not talking about a girlfriend didn’t mean anything either. Plenty of people didn’t talk about their relationships in the workplace. 

Claire’s flour-covered hands curled into fists behind her back, her nails digging hard into her skin. If she didn’t, she knew she was going to cry, and she couldn’t think of anything more humiliating than that. 

Crying over spilled milk.

This just felt like _so_ much more than spilled milk. 

Carla called back a response to Brad, but Claire didn’t hear it. 

She desperately needed to not be standing next to him right now. She didn’t need his towering, overwhelming presence, his broad, inviting shoulders, his unexpectedly gentle hands anywhere near her right now. 

Brad suddenly stopped kneading and stepped closer to her, leaning on his forearms to put his eyes at a closer level to hers.

Of course he’d picked up on her shift in mood. She’d never met a man with more emotional intelligence than Brad, and right now, she hated that about him.

“Hey,” he said in a low voice, his eyebrows drawing together. “You feelin’ okay, Claire? You’re looking a little green, if I’m honest.” 

She stared at the dough next to them, refusing to -- no, incapable of -- meeting his eyes. 

“You know, I actually do feel a little sick. You think you can handle this recipe for the rest of the day if I head home?”

He nudged her elbow gently with his knuckles. “Course I can. You just go home and take care of yourself, all right? Have some tea, take a nap. And seriously, call me if you need anything, Claire. I’d be happy to help ya.”

Claire resisted the urge to wince. She knew he would help. She knew he would be happy to. But he couldn’t fix something that he was the root cause of. He couldn’t fix something that, to him, wasn’t broken.

She wanted so badly to be angry with him right now. But there was really nothing to be angry about other than her own naïveté. He’d done nothing wrong. He’d only ever treated her with unfailing kindness -- as a friend.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, already stripping her apron off over her head as she headed for the door. 

For the rest of the weekend, Claire let herself mourn. She let herself cry until she felt sick. She let herself be angry that she had to go back to the kitchen every day from here on out and work alongside a man she’d been falling in love with. A man who was in a relationship, who was kind and charming and genuine and impossible to hate. 

And on Sunday afternoon, she blew her nose, cleared her throat, and picked up the napkin a man at a cocktail party had handed her a few weeks ago, his name and number written on it in blue pen over the slate gray paper weave. 

The phone rang three times before he picked up.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Harris, I don’t know if you remember me from a few weeks ago, but this is Claire Saffitz…”

#  _Winter, 2015_

Brad spread his arms wide in welcome as Claire stepped into the new test kitchen. 

“Whaddaya think?”

Claire stopped in her tracks, surveying the new space. Since Brad had been appointed kitchen manager, the test kitchen had started a move from their rental space in Times Square to the 35th floor of the new World Trade Center. The new kitchen had wall-to-wall windows on one side, and natural light poured in, making the brand-new, spotless white countertops gleam. Claire’s eyes widened as she stepped further into the room, bracing her palms against a counter by the window and standing on her toes to look out.

“It’s gorgeous,” she called out to him, her eyes dancing over the new view. “So much better than looking out at a neon Walgreen’s sign.”

“I’m glad you like it,” Brad grinned, clapping his hands together in front of him. He marveled at the duality of Claire: so impossible to please when it came to her own work, but so incredibly easy to please when it came to everything else. 

“I’m so excited that I won’t have to fight through the tourist hordes anymore to get into work,” she groaned, walking over to join him near one of the pantries.

Brad smiled to himself. He’d gone into work with her a few times before, after some of their morning coffee planning periods -- recipe writing, ingredient sourcing, they always seemed to do it better alone and outside of the kitchen office. Any time they’d had to fight their way through a particularly sardine-like crowd, she’d get this look on her face: stern, determined, and, though he’d never mention it to her, nowhere near as fierce-looking as she thought. He’d always tried to walk in front of her, using the bulk of his frame to carve out a path. 

“Anything to help you breathe easier,” he smiled down at her easily. “I do have a favor to ask, though.”

She rolled her eyes up to meet his warily. “What is it, Brad?”

He clasped his hands together in supplication. “So, this dry ingredients pantry somehow ended up getting moved without anything getting labeled…” he began, nodding toward the pantry shelves.

Claire huffed in mild annoyance. “Yes, Brad, I’ll help you organize this pantry. But _just_ this one,” she admonished, shrugging out of her coat and hanging it on an apron rack.

“You’re the best Claire, really you are.” 

Brad knew he sounded ingratiating, but he really did mean it.

When he’d walked into that kitchen months and months ago, tired of washing dishes and hoping to find his way back to food, he never would have guessed that the small, serious, gifted woman standing alone at her bench would have become his best friend.

To others, their friendship wouldn’t make sense at all. Brad knew he was loud, he was big, he was outgoing, and he never met a stranger. He never measured his ingredients. He could never explain to anyone his methods. And Claire -- Claire was a little machine, writing instructions down to the minutiae, quiet and reserved until you got to know her. But somehow -- beautifully -- these qualities worked in tandem alongside each other, striking a sublime balance, the perfect exchange of push and pull. 

He didn’t know what he’d do in here without her.

Next to him, Claire pulled down a box full of ground spices, sitting unused and unlabeled in small bags. 

Brad fished around in his jeans pocket for a sharpie to label them with and finally produced one, handing it out to her proudly.

She tilted her head at him in disbelief. “A sharpie? Brad. No. No,” she murmured, disappearing past him for a second and digging around into her purse that was sitting on the opposite counter. A moment later, she drew out a small machine in her hand. 

It was a label maker.

Brad doubled over, howling with laughter. “You carry around a label maker in your purse?” He wheezed. “I gotta say, I wish that surprised me, but it just doesn’t.”

Claire scowled at him. “I don’t usually! I just came prepared! I know moving always leads to disorganization and I don’t want anyone taking my imported caster sugar and just chucking it in their cookies like it’s _normal_ sugar!”

Brad laughed harder as she turned her back on him and pointedly opened a baggie, sniffing its contents. Frowning, she dipped a finger into the smoky red powder, touching her fingertip lightly to her tongue.

“It’s chipotle powder,” she announced, nodding confidently to herself. She turned the label maker on, typing quickly and hitting enter. A few moments later, she pasted the thin black and white label to the bag and returned it to the tub. 

Still shaking his head, Brad reached down for another box, slightly miffed that someone had put all of the white dry ingredients in similar tupperware and failed to label them. 

“Imagine how rich we’d be if all of this was fuckin’ cocaine,” Brad mused out loud, popping open a plastic lid as he lowered himself to the floor.

“Jesus, Brad,” Claire shot back, adhering a “sage” label onto another bag. “Anyways, I doubt you’d have much of a good time snorting any of _that_ up your schnoz.”

Brad leaned down, inhaling gently, trying to determine if it was baking soda or flour. In a crisis of terrible timing, a violent tickle ravaged one of his nostrils, and he shouted in alarm at the very last second, powerless to stop what was about to happen.

A sneeze wracked his body, sending a cloud of what Brad now knew to be flour outward and all over his face.

“Oh _no_ ,” he heard Claire shriek next to him, her voice weak with amusement. “ _Brad,_ ” she managed to choke out, sinking to the floor next to him as she laughed uncontrollably. 

“I can’t believe this,” he said dourly, coughing out a fog of flour. 

Peals of laughter still rang out from Claire’s direction as she clutched her sides. 

“We get it, Saffitz, I’m a fuckin’ bozo, all right,” he deadpanned, trying to tug the tiny white grains from his eyelashes. 

“I’m sorry,” she wheezed, getting on her knees and crawling toward him. “Here,” she paused, swallowing down a giggle, “let me help.”

She grabbed the corner of her apron and brushed gently at his cheeks, her hand resting on top of his head for balance. Dropping her apron, she used her soft, little hands to swipe under his eyes, dusting at his eyebrows and skating over his forehead. 

“It’s okay, Claire,” he said, running his own hands over the bristle of his beard, groaning internally at the shower of white that fell onto his shirt. 

“No,” she protested, her voice still weak from laughing, “I feel bad for laughing so hard at you-”

“It’s fine,” he repeated, taking her wrists in his hands and gently tugging them away. “It’s just another bad luck Brad day.” 

Claire frowned. “Do those happen a lot?”

Brad met her eyes. From what he knew, things were really going great with Claire and Harris. She had been leaving early on Fridays a lot lately to meet him across town for dinner. She’d been getting more and more freedom to create, more space to write her own recipes instead of just testing others. From what he knew, things had really been looking up for Claire.

Which is why, even though she was his best friend, he didn’t plan on dragging her down. 

She didn’t need to know about the fights he’d been having with his girlfriend almost every other night. She didn’t need to know that some days, things had gotten so bad at home the night before that he just didn’t go home, that he slept on the couch in the test kitchen office instead. She didn’t need to know. 

Brad shot her a grin. “Nah. You know me, things are always lookin’ up if you know where to look.”

She studied him, concern pooling in her dark eyes, quiet for a moment before breaking her gaze.

“That’s good,” she said finally, brushing off the dusting of flour from his shoulder.

A chime swelled from her pocket, breaking the silence around them. 

As she swiped her lock screen up, Brad saw that the message had been from her boyfriend. 

“Oh man, I’m really sorry, but I gotta go,” she said, looking genuinely contrite. “I forgot about the homemade pasta demo Harris is doing this afternoon and I promised I’d be there.” 

Deep down, something sharp and uncomfortable pinched at Brad, a feeling he shoved down immediately, reflexively. 

Anyone would feel sad about getting ditched by a friend, he rationalized. 

“Yeah, of course. Go! I’ve got the rest of this.”

Claire tilted her head. “Are you sure? We only just got started and I’m sure I could-”

“Really,” he interrupted. “You’re fine. Everyone deserves a pasta cheerleader of your caliber around when in need.”

Claire patted his arm. “Thanks.” Groaning, she heaved herself up off the floor, reaching for her label maker so she could tuck it back in her bag for safe keeping.

“Hey, do you trust me enough to leave that with me? It was really a good idea, even if I gave ya grief over it.”

Hesitating, she slowly handed it over. “But take care of it,” she admonished. “It’s the only one I have.” 

“I’ll treat it like it’s sacred,” he said solemnly, cradling it to his chest.

“I’ll see you Monday, yeah?” She called, tugging her coat back on.

“Monday,” he nodded, and he watched as she turned to go, disappearing down the hallway and out to the elevator. 

He hadn’t wanted her to go.

But even more, he hadn’t wanted to hold her back. 

#  _Summer, 2017_

Claire stared at the boxes of twinkies sitting on the counter in front of her, tamping down on the growing, panicky need to freak out welling inside her. 

She didn’t want to be on camera. She’d never once envisioned a life for herself where she’d be doing anything in front of a camera. Sure, she was comfortable in the kitchen around all her coworkers, but something about the second the film started to roll made all of that evaporate completely from her being, like smoke on the wind. 

Part of her was excited about the new challenge. She liked being challenged, because being challenged usually meant accomplishing a goal, if you tried hard enough. And if she was honest with herself, a lot of her self-worth came from the goals she accomplished.

Though she’d ditched the box dye and let her streaks of hair run gray now for almost a year, and even grown to like the look, she suddenly felt very self-conscious about them again. What would people say about a woman, barely thirty, who was already going gray?

What if they didn’t like her at all? What if they found her too “type A”, uptight, and totally unrelatable? What if the video series totally flopped?

Part of her expected it to. After the success of Brad’s series, she’d been flabbergasted when they’d approached her with a second video concept -- gourmet renditions of junk food.

Of course Brad’s series was succeeding. It wasn’t because of what he was doing -- it was because of who he was. Charming, goofy, always the one guy in the room no one could ignore. His real-life charisma bled straight through the screen, winning him scores and scores of fans and loyal viewers. And she understood it. She knew herself how magnetic, how friendly, how sweet he was, with the added bonus of all that being wrapped up in a 6 foot 4, ruggedly handsome package. She’d have been more surprised if viewers _hadn’t_ fallen in love with him. 

But Claire? That wasn’t her. Not only was she camera-shy, she was often just shy in general. She didn’t like being the focal point of attention. Talking with friends was fine; talking in front of a room full of people made her palms shake with nervousness. She didn’t have that same raw charisma to fall back on. 

And yet -- they’d chosen her anyways.

Last night, Harris was full of nothing but confidence, reassuring her over and over how she’d do great, how her baking knowledge and expertise would shine through. He told her not to worry.

But that was the thing about being told not to worry. It never produced any kind of calming effect at all. It was a wildly useless sentiment.

“It’s kinda intimidating, huh?” An elbow nudged her as Brad’s familiar, nasal, homegrown-Jersey voice reached her ears. “Just laying yourself out there for everyone to see.” He flattened his palms on the counter next to her, leaning forward.

“Maybe I should have dyed my hair before this,” Claire mused, shooting a faint grimace in his direction.

“Nah,” he said immediately, resolutely. “It’s part of what makes you _you_ , Claire. It’s a good look. Don’t change it now.”

“Thanks,” she ducked her head. “How do you do it, Brad? How does getting tailed by a camera crew at work not make you wig out?”

He drummed the countertop. “Y’know, it did a little at first. It’s not easy making friends with filming equipment. But I think focusing on it actually helps -- focusing on the camera, the boom, and not the fact that there’s gonna be a ton of people watching on the other side.”

Claire snorted. “I’m not gonna have a ton of people watching me, Brad. I think I’m physically incapable of ‘acting natural’. Really. And, me aside, how many people are actually going to care about how to make a hostess snack or a cheeto?”

Brad cocked his head. “I think you’ll make ‘em care, Claire. There’s not many people out there as dedicated to their craft as you are, and it’ll show. It’ll draw people in.” He grinned. “You’re gonna be a star.”

“Now you’re just making shit up,” Claire shook her head. 

“Nah, I’m serious. Listen, I bet you a croquembouche that you’re gonna outpace me with viewers. I’m sure of it.”

Claire rolled her eyes, choosing to ignore his wild mispronunciation of “croquembouche”. 

“You have no idea how to make a croquembouche.”

Brad put his hands on his hips. “Well, I guess I’m just gonna have to learn. And soon.”

“Ha, ha,” she laughed dryly, fiddling nervously with her apron straps. 

“Hey, I know you’re nervous about it. But I’ll be in here the whole time. I’ll get behind the camera guys and hold up signs of affirmation if you need me to. Dead honest.”

“That actually would help, you know,” she admitted, a smile creeping up her lips. 

“I know. Never say I don’t know ya, Saffitz,” he tapped her shoulder. “Hey, can I have your autograph before you get famous?”

“Brad, you have a spare key to my apartment. The only reason you’d need an autograph from me at this point is if you were planning to commit identity theft.” 

And slowly, the knot in Claire’s stomach began to loosen. This was her home base. This was what she was familiar with -- bantering with Brad, side by side at a work station, pretending she was annoyed at his jokes and his bravado while he earnestly encouraged her work and lifted her mood. It was the same feeling as slipping on house shoes after a night in heels or feeling the key undo the lock on your front door after a long day at work. It was comfort. It was _relief_.

“Now don’t forget,” Brad cautioned her, backing away from the counter. “Smile with your mouth, with your eyes, with your hands. They’ll never be able to resist ya then.”

Claire shook her head. If any other man had told her to smile, she would’ve been annoyed at the condescension. But Brad didn’t mean it that way. Miraculously, he cared more about the motivation behind it and less about the expression itself. He wanted people to smile because they were happy. 

As the cameras began to roll, Claire knew she was talking too fast. She was paralyzingly aware of her body language, torn between talking with her hands a lot or keeping them busy on the counter in front of her. She was acutely conscious of these things, yet felt absolutely powerless to stop them as the take went on. 

Ripping her eyes up from the dissected twinkies in front of her, she noticed Brad standing behind the camera guy, smiling at her as he held up a sheet of parchment paper covered in his messy scrawl: _SAFFITZ TAKES THE WORLD BY STORM._ Realizing he’d caught her eye, he shot her a wink, which, in true Brad fashion, turned out to be closer to a blink.

It took herculean effort for her to swallow down a smile as she dragged her gaze away and focused back on the camera. 

… 

Brad sprawled out on the couch, waiting for his fiancée to get home from the store. His foot stretched far past the armrest, and he swore, cursing his height as he accidentally jammed his toe against the handle of a vacuum cleaner. 

The fighting that had plagued them for over a year had finally stopped, and they’d found their way back to each other. They’d learned to talk more, to raise their voices less, to bond through mutual activities instead of always doing their own separate thing. Somewhere in the peace that they’d found, Brad had seen a ring in a shop window, and he’d known that it was time.

She didn’t love that he’d hidden it on a breadstick, which in hindsight, he admitted likely wasn’t his finest moment, but she’d accepted anyways, laughing almost too hard to kiss him across the dinner table. 

They were happy. 

Brad gently tugged his phone from his jeans pocket. He knew Claire’s video was premiering on the YouTube channel today, and he was dying to see how it had turned out. Wondering if the camera had been able to capture her brilliance, her dedication, her charm.

He wanted the viewers to root for her as much as he did.

As he watched her pop her version of twinkies out of their molds, a relieved smile slowly curling up her lips, he knew he was going to be right.

She was going to be a star.

The teensiest part of him, a part of him he didn’t like to acknowledge, felt a little stab of mourning at the thought. 

The culinary wonder that was Claire Saffitz wasn’t going to be his cherished little secret anymore. 

Still, he hoped that all of this would make her see herself for what she was. 

A pastry chef in a league of her own. A genius. A beautiful person.

Sighing, Brad pulled up the search engine on his phone and began googling how to make choux pastry. 

… 

A couple of months later, Claire wandered into work slightly early -- a freak accident, a horrible aligning of the stars, a happening that she’d never have orchestrated on purpose. It just somehow ended up that way.

Sitting at her station was a towering croquembouche, constructed with translucent-amber caramel, slightly crooked sides, and half-wilted spun sugar.

“I did my best,” Brad told her, shooting her his age-old crooked grin. “Almost triple the hits as _It’s Alive_ , Claire. I gotta say, I told you so.”

Claire had made a croquembouche before. She knew how long it took, how intricate the construction of it was.

“Thanks for believing in me,” she said sincerely, tilting her head against his shoulder and smiling at the caramel scent of his shirt. 

  
  


#  _Fall, 2018_

Brad set down his drill, finally finished with the latest contraption he’d been making for one of Claire’s gourmet snack projects. 

It was one of his favorite things to do lately -- building something, working with his hands, making something that made Claire smile, made her day easier. 

Work was one of the only places lately where he could let loose and find enjoyment in what he was doing.

Somewhere between the last frosts of spring and the sweltering heat of summer, the old arguments between him and Peggy that he thought had been put to bed for good started up again. Agreeing on nothing about the future, about the present, about how a relationship should work.

Brad had hoped that after proposing, things would simmer down to an eternally manageable, mild place, but they’d just gotten worse, month after month. 

It was breaking his heart.

He wasn’t even sure she wanted things to work out -- he’d noticed she’d stopped wearing the engagement ring he’d gotten her, and dodged the question whenever he asked her about it. Just last week, she’d told him that she was going to Thanksgiving down with her brother’s family, and she’d told him that she thought it would be best if he didn’t come along.

He’d accepted it silently, then left the room, wishing fiercely for a few shots of whiskey and trying not to cry. 

And so he’d thrown himself into his work, finding happiness as he could in being with his coworkers, in traveling, in creating.

In Claire.

He hadn’t been able to keep his troubles at home secret from her this time. Their moods were like the same radio wave, always evident to each other in a way that took others much longer to pick up on, to tune in to. He’d brushed her off at first, but her soft eyes, her hand on his shoulder reeled him in -- it never took much of her to make him crumble. He’d barely been able to look her in the eye when he admitted what was going on. He hated the thought of her feeling sorry for him, of worrying about him. He wanted her laughter and her praise, not her pity. 

But sharing with her felt like the first right thing he’d done in a long time. 

When she’d moved in with Harris a few months ago, some perverse, selfish part of him felt like he was being left behind. The spare key he had was useless now. All of the things he’d fixed for her over the years, left behind. Her video views were ever-growing, her new apartment was too nice to need any fixing up, and her relationship now was at cohabitation levels of serious. 

It’s not that he was jealous. 

He wasn’t jealous.

But a tiny piece of fear lodged inside of him, fear that he would lose her. Fearing she’d finally quit the test kitchen, move to Boston, and open the bakery she’d always dreamed of. 

Of course, he’d be happy for her. But that fear was always with him, rubbing the wrong way, like a persistent pebble stuck in his shoe. 

He couldn’t imagine a world where he was no longer working across from his best friend. 

“Hey Claire, you ready to test this?” He called across the kitchen.

… 

“Hey Brad, what are you doing for Thanksgiving?” Claire sidled up to him suddenly in the walk-in, her hands clasped together in front of her. 

Claire studied him carefully, watching for any expressions he might try to hide from her. She knew he’d been struggling at home lately, and she was worried about him. Over the years, his ebullient personality and infectious good humor had always tided her over in and outside of work, making the world seem a little brighter. His presence in her video series was an absolute crux of her success; so many times, she’d wanted to give up, to toss everything she’d made into the trash, but then he’d come ambling over to her station like he always did, telling her how good she was doing, cracking a joke, leaving her with suggestions and with boosted confidence. 

So lately, seeing his smile fail to reach his eyes some days deeply unsettled her. Unhappy Brad should be a paradox. It _felt_ like it should be a paradox. Thinking of him hurting underneath his genial outward disposition made her chest tighten. When he’d heavily implied that he’d be alone for Thanksgiving last week, it had given her an idea.

He rubbed a hand over his beanie, grimacing slightly.

“Nothin’ that I know of, Claire. Havin’ a beer. Makin’ a pie I can have all to myself. Why do you ask?”

“I uh,” Claire paused, licking her lips. Why did she feel heat rising in her cheeks all of a sudden? It was just Brad. “I was just wondering if you wanted to come up to the cape for a day for my family’s get-together. They usually give me full command of the kitchen, and I could honestly really use a sous chef that knows what he’s doing. I just thought it could be nice, you know? We always have room for more up there.”

Brad shook his head. “Claire, that’s real nice of ya, but I don’t wanna intrude at all. Poppin’ up to the cape to bother a bunch of people I’m not even related to, making you and Harris drag me along, nah. Thanks for asking, though.”

Claire nudged his arm. “You wouldn’t be intruding at all, Brad. Harris can’t make it anyways -- he promised he’d go to his family’s thing in Nevada for the week. I already promised my mom I’d be at the cape, so we’re splitting up. Besides, my mom wants to meet you,” she laughed. “She’s heard all about you by now.”

Claire swallowed. It hadn’t occurred to her that he might reject her offer. She didn’t know why she was so nervous in asking him. But the thought of him sitting at home alone with his beer over the holiday actively upset her, and she wasn’t going to let him if she could help it.

He turned to look down at her, tossing a cabbage nonchalantly from one of his giant hands to the other.

“Ya know what, Claire? I’d be honored. Plus, it gives me an opportunity to get some dirt on baby Claire from your parents. I’m dyin’ to hear what the kid-version of you was like.”

Claire rolled her eyes, but smiled in relief. “If you blackmail me, I’m ransoming your SCOBY.” 

“I’ll even drive us, yeah? It’s been a while since we’ve been on an express trip in the Leone-mobile.” Brad rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

“I was actually hoping you’d say that,” Claire admitted, taking the cabbage from Brad just to get him to stop fidgeting with it. 

He shot her a withering glance. “Oh, I see how it is. You’re just trying to bum a ride. Uh-huh.”

“Brad!” She groaned. “I’m serious. I’d really like you there.” 

He laughed. “I believe ya. What time should I pick you up, then?”

… 

Brad sped along I-95, northbound, as Claire put her feet up on the dash. They took turns sipping strong coffee from a single large paper cup sitting in the console, trying to stay awake in the warm, humid heat of the truck’s cab. Frost coated the grass and dying greenery they passed by, the glisten of a November morning sparkling in the rearview. 

Checking the time, Claire reached down for her purse, rooting around in its depths. Feeling the rough texture of a brown paper sack, she closed her fingers around it and yanked it upward. 

“Whatcha got there, Claire?” Brad glanced over, one hand curled lazily over the top of the steering wheel.

“Some plums. You want one?” 

“My god, Claire, are you pre-gaming Thanksgiving?”

“So what if I am,” she shot back, biting into the fruit and enjoying the tart sweetness of it, admiring the reddish-orange gradient of its flesh. 

“Unbelievable,” Brad shook his head.

Claire grinned. “You want a bite?”

“Absolutely. Hit me with it.”

Claire leaned over, offering up the unbitten side of her breakfast to his lips. He chomped down, tearing away a huge piece of the fruit.

“Mmm. Good idea, Claire,” he teased, his eyes sparkling.

“You know, I’d be mad about a bite that big if I didn’t have two more in my bag.”

“I know.” He licked the juice from the plum off his lips. “So Claire. Tell me about what I’m gettin’ into. Anyone I gotta watch out for? Anyone you need me to distract from asking you annoying life questions?”

Claire laughed. “Actually, no. The aunts have given me a more of a break now that I’m actually dating someone. For a while there I was close to having a meltdown after each repeated ‘biological clock is ticking, Claire honey!’ comment. But it’s gotten better. Don’t forget my mom particularly is excited to meet you. Sauci.”

“Sauci Saffitz. Good name. I almost don’t wanna know what you’ve told her about me.”

“Oh, mostly that you constantly disrupt my creative processes and have the acute inability to stand still for longer than 3 seconds at a time.”

“Claire! You wound me. No need to go full-sour today, Saffitz, it’s fuckin’ Thanksgiving.” Brad swerved slightly, narrowly avoiding a squirrel scampering across the road. “Sonuvabitch,” he muttered.

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding.” Claire held up her hands in innocence. “She just watches all the videos. I had to teach her how to subscribe to a channel just so she wouldn’t miss one. She thinks you’re charming.”

“Eh, I do what I can. Hey, you wanna hand me another one of those plums?”

He flashed her a smile he knew she couldn’t say no to. She never could. Giving him a withering, affectionate look, she reached back down into her bag.

… 

Claire had expected commandeering the kitchen to be less stressful than it had been last year, thanks to Brad’s help.

She’d been so wrong.

It’s not that he didn’t help. He dutifully chopped vegetables, taste-tested for seasoning unsupervised, and stirred anything he was told to stir. But every single time someone wandered near the kitchen, he’d get distracted, chatting away with whoever it was. Asking her Uncle Joe about fishing, complimenting her mother on how nice the house was, telling her little cousins a story about how he once burned a fingerprint off -- it was endless. He fit here so easily. Jarringly so. 

He was too friendly for his own good and for the good of the impending meal. 

Finally, after everyone had gone out into the yard to begin setting the table, Claire had the kitchen -- and Brad -- to herself. 

“What else can I do for ya?” He asked, suddenly appearing again at her side in her mother’s ‘Kiss the Cook’ apron, his backwards ballcap slightly askew. “Want me to check the caramelization on the balsamic carrots over there?”

Claire turned to him, already exhausted and burning up in the heat of the kitchen. A bead of sweat dripped down the side of her temple, and the feeling of it paired with the eager, open look on Brad’s face sent a tidal wave of deja-vu washing over her. 

Suddenly, she was back in the Times Square test kitchen again, slaving over an almond torte recipe that she hated, sweating in the mid-summer heat, gazing up in surprise at a gentle giant of a man that she’d never met before in her life.

And now they were here, sweating together in the kitchen again, still a team after all these years. Brad, still standing beside her, strong and capable and unfailingly good to her, waiting to lift whatever burden of hers that he could and take it on himself. 

Her heart lurched erratically in her chest, a funny feeling warming inside her.

She shoved it down. 

She couldn’t let herself feel that.

She _needed_ to not feel that. 

That ship had sailed. A long, long time ago.

“Um, yeah, thanks,” she finally responded, turning back to the stove and away from his gaze. 

“Where’d you just go, Claire? You looked pretty far away just now.” Brad grabbed the pan from the stove, stirring gently and tilting the liquid in the pan from side to side. 

Claire whipped cream into the mashed potatoes, wiping sweat away from her face with the back of her other hand. She wondered if this was one of those rare instances where she needed to lie to Brad Leone.

Just as she thought she was about to, different words left her mouth.

“I was just thinking of when we first met,” she murmured, sprinkling salt into the potato pot. “The two of us, sweating away in a kitchen, trying to make something good out of it.”

Brad was quiet for a moment. “Well, we’re a long way from summer in Times Square,” he said finally, his voice not as loud as usual. “I mean, hey, look who’s president now,” he chuckled, lightening the mood. 

“Don’t remind me,” she groaned, reaching past him for the black pepper, grateful that he hadn’t let the moment get weird. That he hadn’t made fun of her nostalgia or belittled it.

“Claire, you’re roasting,” he said in a playful tone. “Why don’t you go outside and tell everyone the food’ll be out soon? I can manage this on my own for a second.”

“Is that a nice way of telling me I’m sweating like a pig?”

Brad shook his head in mock-seriousness. “You look amazing, Claire. No veiled insults coming from me.”

She shook her head. “If you say so. I’ll be right back then, okay? And _please_ don’t let the skin on the turkey burn.”  
  


“Wait, no one eat yet!” Claire’s mom called down the table, waving her arms frantically. “We’ve got to do the Thanksgiving toast!”

Claire turned to give Brad a look -- one that said “please humor her and don’t eat the cranberry sauce you’ve been eyeing since you sat down yet.”

“Okay, I’ll make it short,” Sauci reassured them all, standing up at her seat. She raised a glass of iced tea, her smile wide. “To loved ones,” she said in a warm voice, her arm outstretched. “Both old and new.” 

As everyone else returned the toast, Claire’s mother caught her eye, a dangerous twinkle in them. One that wasn’t good.

Not good at all.

… 

As Brad headed outside with some of the other men to clean up the grilling area, Claire’s mother sidled up next to her daughter at the sink, loading the dishwasher as her daughter scrubbed away.

“He’s even nicer than he comes across in those videos you two make,” her mother said to her, giving her a light hip check. “A bit more foul-mouthed, though.”

“That’s just Brad being Brad,” Claire answered, picking at a piece of stuffing that was sticking to the bottom of the pan with soapy hands. “He’s never met a stranger, from what I can tell.”

“And how long have you been in love with him?” 

The pan slid out of Claire’s hands and into the murky dishwasher.

“Mom, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She wasn’t having this conversation. Not with herself, not with anyone. Especially not with her mother. It was a door she never, ever planned to open.

“He loves you too, you know.”

“Mom, he’s engaged,” Claire grit her teeth, fishing around for the pan she’d dropped. 

“Things change, honey.” Her mom sighed. “There’s something there, Claire, and I don’t think you or anyone else can deny that. Even all those internet people leave comments because whatever it is that’s between you two is so _loud_ that even they can see it through their screens. Usually, I don’t have much faith in public opinion, but this time, I think they may have gotten it right.” 

Claire’s fist clenched in the dishwater. She hated the comments that cropped up under all of their videos, without fail. She hated the running commentary on their chemistry. She hated her relationship with Brad being laid bare for all to see, to judge and to speculate upon, even when she herself was never completely sure of what it was. 

It was bad enough hearing all of that from people who’d never met her and never would.

She didn’t think she could take it from the woman who raised her, too.

“We’re not having this discussion,” she said firmly, wiping her hands on a dish towel and grabbing a half-empty bottle of wine as she left the room. 

Hearing the din of conversation rising from the back porch, she headed to the smaller one at the front of the house instead. 

It was already twilight, the light nearly gone from the early evening sky, and Claire shivered a little as she sank down onto the brick steps, grateful that the little stoop was deserted. 

She lifted the wine bottle to her lips, taking a hearty swig.

Her introversion was kicking in hard. She didn’t know how much more socializing she could do at this point in the day.

That, and she was exhausted from ignoring the turmoil inside her, rumbling low and threatening to rise. 

And still, she continued to ignore it. 

She closed her eyes, trying to empty her mind, letting herself be soothed by the rustling of the last of the autumn leaves dancing in the wind. 

She had no idea how long she’d been sitting there when she felt the weight of another body sink down next to her. She already knew who it was before she opened her eyes.

“You doin’ okay?” Brad’s voice was low, warm as he leaned into her slightly, a bottle of her father’s favorite beer in his hand. 

She eyed him tiredly and found herself enticed by the soft twist of his lips and the sympathetic tilt of his head.

“Just worn out,” she said, a half-truth.

“Yeah, I know how crowds can get to ya after awhile. That’s what you’ve got me for, huh?” He nudged her shoulder with his, taking a gentle sip of his beer and setting it down on the porch beside him. “I better stop there. Gotta drive soon, I’m guessing?” 

Claire nodded. “It’s a long ride back.”

“Hey, thanks for bringing me,” he said, the lightness in his tone faltering ever so slightly. “It was good to get out of the house, I see that now. And your family’s sweet. The kids are cute. Makes me wonder if I’ll ever have any little rascals of my own,” he tried to say casually and failed.

Claire’s chest tightened. “I’m so glad you’re here, Brad. But I’m sorry it was under these circumstances. Really.” She patted his knee gently, still not turning to fully face him. 

“Hey, if I couldn’t be with my family, you’d always be my first choice, Claire. Don’t know what I’d do without ya.”

She almost didn’t catch his sigh as he wrapped a long, warm arm around her shoulders, drawing her in as he pressed a kiss to her temple, his bristly chin scratching against her cheek. A shiver shot up Claire’s back involuntarily.

“Here, take my jacket,” he said, already shrugging out of it. 

“Oh no, it’s fine, I-”

“Take it,” he said again, draping it around her shoulders. “Can’t have popsicle Claire on my watch.”

His denim jacket was warm, entirely too long for her, and smelled like pumpkin pie spices and his soap. He laughed when he noticed several inches of sleeve hanging past her hands, and he gently took her arms one at a time and rolled them up to cuff her wrists.

“There ya go, you little gremlin,” he teased, knocking his knee against hers. 

“Brad, I’m the _normal_ sized human in this situation. It’s not my fault you have the wingspan of a goddamn condor.” 

“Hey, who’d reach things on the top shelves of the cabinets for ya if I didn’t?”

Claire tucked his jacket closer around her, huddling into it for warmth and aggressively ignoring the tingle of the skin on her face his chin had scratched against just moments ago. 

It didn’t mean anything. She was just surprised by it, is all. 

Fishing down into her pants pocket, she pulled out her phone and clicked the screen on.

_Hope your day was great! I know everyone loved your food. See you in the morning! Love you!_

Embarrassed she hadn’t thought to check her phone earlier, Claire typed her boyfriend a quick message back:

_Love you too._

And she did. She really did. 

“I’m ready to hit the road if you are,” Brad piped up suddenly, slapping his hands down on his knees and pushing up from the steps. He held out a hand to her, hoisting her up alongside him.

“Ready,” she answered back, dodging his gaze as she headed past him to say her goodbyes.

… 

Brad forged on quietly down the nearly empty highway, the road lit only by moonlight. He glanced over at his passenger, watching her chest rise and fall slowly underneath his jacket, which now doubled as a blanket. Her head lolled against the headrest, her face toward him. 

She’d been asleep for the past half hour. At first, she’d tried valiantly to stay awake and conversational, vowing to keep him company.

But in the end, the motion of the car, the lateness of the hour, and the warmth of the truck had won out, and when she’d stopped replying to him suddenly in the middle of a debate about the best James Bond movie, he’d looked over to find her asleep, his jacket tucked around her up to the chin.

She deserved the rest. 

But he had to admit he missed her conversation. Without it, his mind drifted to places he was tired of visiting, tired of hashing out over and over in his head. 

He wished that right now, they were back in the kitchen together, constructing ridiculous tools and mock-arguing over the inherent invalidity of taffy. A place where he felt free, where he could let go of his worries for a little while and do what he loved to do best. 

But Claire was exhausted. He’d seen her retreat into her shell more and more as the day went on, knowing her, knowing that she needed time to recover herself after exerting that much social energy.

He knew he was one of the few lucky ones that seemed to be exempt from her limited social tolerance. 

He didn’t know what he’d done to earn that from her, to deserve it, but god, did he know it made him lucky. Given the difference in their dispositions, an act of god must have caused it. 

A tiny snore issued from Claire’s direction, startling her awake. Her sleepy eyes met his, her cheeks turning red.

“Was I snoring?” She asked in a thick voice, tugging the jacket tighter up under her chin.

Brad couldn’t help but smile at her, looking down at her flushed, drowsy face.

“Nah,” he answered, readjusting his grip on the steering wheel and tapping it in a nonsense rhythm. 

“Oh, good,” she sighed, shifting in her seat.

“Hey Claire, did I ever tell ya the story of the rat king?”

Claire frowned, stifling a yawn. “You definitely haven’t.”

“Oh man, you gotta hear this story. Well you see, this one time I was...”

#  _Spring, 2019_

Something long and slender caught Brad’s eye in the carpenter’s shop he’d stopped into on his way to the airport in Montana. 

It was a rolling pin. 

Impossibly smooth and perfectly curved, the warm, amber-colored wood grains almost shone in the overhead light. Well-made and useful, yet aesthetically pleasing. 

He knew immediately that he had to get it for Claire.

The price was a little steeper than the average vacation souvenir, but he didn’t mind too much. Plus, his paychecks had been rising as of late. He thought that last year, the channel views had topped out. Yet even now, they kept climbing and climbing, the community swelling over the confines of the original platform and spilling into other social media, into fan blogs and high profile interviews. 

After chatting with the seller, an older man in flannel with a beard that far surpassed Brad’s own, he hopped back into his rental truck, pleased with his purchase. Smiling in anticipation of the delight he knew would be on Claire’s face when she saw it.

Only as he neared the rental return did he begin to question himself.

Was it really proper to bring a girl back an expensive gift from a trip? Only her?

Hell, he hadn’t even gotten his fiancée something. It hadn’t crossed his mind.

Well, fiancée, girlfriend. Whatever she was now, he thought bitterly. 

She’d moved out of their house a few weeks ago, saying that she needed some space. That they both needed some room to think. Brad had tried calling, tried texting, tried finding her so they could try to work through things, but she hadn’t answered. She hadn’t wanted to. 

He didn’t know what he was supposed to do. He didn’t know what else to do. 

He’d been with her for so long, for almost a decade now. He’d never envisioned a life where they’d be willingly parting ways.

But Brad was never a fortune teller, and even his uncanny ability to pick up on other people’s feelings couldn’t save him from everything.

He stared at the rolling pin in the seat next to him.

It might have been a mistake.

No, it wasn’t a mistake. Claire would love it, and he wanted her to have it. He just didn’t want to make her uncomfortable, accepting a nice gift from a man who _wasn’t_ her live-in boyfriend.

Once he’d gotten past security in the airport, he frantically dipped in and out of souvenir and sundry shops, picking up something small and as customized to taste as he could manage for every other one of the BA chefs. By the time he’d finished up, he could barely fit it all into his backpack. As he dashed toward final boarding at his gate, he prayed he hadn’t forgotten anybody. 

When he’d gotten to the test kitchen the next day, arms full of gifts like some twisted, swearing Santa Claus, she wasn’t even working. 

The next day, a deeply uncharacteristic twinge of shyness tugged at him as he dug the rolling pin out from his cubby. 

She gasped. “I love it! Thank you! Brad…” she beamed, her starburst-from-hell mixture momentarily forgotten. 

“Don’t say I never gave you nothin’,” he replied, playing it cool. Her reaction had been even warmer than he’d expected, and seeing such a simple thing make her so happy made him want to bring her a new kitchen tool every day to work, just to see that smile. 

He trailed slowly back to his own workbench, suddenly unable to recall what he’d been doing before that. 

… 

“This job is going to drive me insane,” Claire admitted after a long drink from her fourth tumbler of old-fashioned. The combination of the failed doughnuts and the failed starbursts had pushed her to the brink, her mind frazzled and her will to continue nearly shot through. Brad, totally at a loss over their current project as well, had taken her up on the idea of a few drinks together to unwind. Now, she was four drinks in, wildly outpacing him, and the twilight had turned into a smokier, deep gray-blue dusk outside. 

“It’s a job no one else could do, Claire,” Brad toasted her briefly before taking another sip of beer. “I’m serious. I’m sure you’d do fine making miso powder or reverse engineering a beef wellington, but I don’t think the rest of us could ever manage to crank out a perfect replica of mass-produced, teeth-rotting snack foods like you do.”

Heat rose to Claire’s cheeks, amplified by the alcohol already coursing through her veins. Brad always knew the perfect compliment to give her. He knew what she wanted to hear, and often, he gave that to her. 

“Thanks, Brad, but it’s still going to drive me insane.”

“You’re gonna get it. You always do. And we’ll figure out the doughnuts together, yeah? If not, at least we had a helluva good time trying.” 

Claire laughed, nodding in agreement. Guest starring on Brad’s series had been some kind of fever dream -- at least, it was when she didn’t have to go back and forth between it and those goddamn starbursts. It was so easy being in the kitchen with Brad, knowing what he meant without him saying, him anticipating a method variation she’d want to try before she ever uttered it out loud. It was almost _too_ easy working alongside him. She was honestly surprised that they’d accomplished anything at all, once all of the jokes and stories and laughter and redos were accounted for. 

“We definitely did. Man, why can’t I just quit making unappealing candies and be on your show instead? I’d be a very bad sous-chef and I know nothing about building things but I could provide witty banter and like, hand your wrenches to you. Or something.” Claire was faintly aware that her words were beginning to slur, blending together like cursive in motion, but she didn’t care that much. Brad would make sure she got home safe. He did that even when she _wasn’t_ drunk. 

Brad chuckled. “You can’t do that, Claire. You’re the star. People would _die_ for Claire Saffitz, don’t ya know?” 

“Ugh. Don’t remind me. I don’t understand the fixation! Really, I don’t.”

Brad leaned on his elbows across the table from her, only quirking his mouth into a half-smile as an answer. 

Sucking down the last of his beer, he drew her empty glass across the table toward him and stood. 

“It’s almost your dinner time, Claire. We should get goin’. C’mon.”

Claire frowned, wobbling to her feet. It wasn’t ridiculous to like to have dinner around the same time every day. It _wasn’t._

“Don’t make fun of me,” she grumbled.

He held up his hands in professed innocence. “I’m not!” 

As they reached the entry hall in her apartment building, the amount of alcohol Claire had consumed had fully taken effect, and she’d looped her arm through Brad’s as they strolled toward her front door.

“I _really_ want lasagna right now,” she rambled, her stomach growling. “But not like, real lasagna. The frozen kind. _Only_ the frozen kind. It’s _so_ good.” Claire closed her eyes, imagining the taste of the savory, meaty tomato sauce leaking down the sides of the long, flat noodles, ricotta cheese oozing from its corners. 

“I think that’s the most blackmail-worthy thing you’ve ever said,” Brad teased, and she was suddenly annoyed at how sober he was compared to her. It made her feel ridiculous. It made her frustrated that she didn’t have the excuse of mutual drunkenness to curl into his side, to hold his hand, to talk to him a little closer than she usually would face-to-face (which was already a bit closer than they should in the first place). But no, he was on the sober side of buzzed, humoring her unsure steps and her whiskey-reddened face. In his sobriety, she lost the opportunity for the affection that the drunk version of herself craved. 

Frowning up at him, she lightly punched his arm. “You know what I said is true.” 

“All right, Claire, you know best. I’m not gonna fight ya.” He smiled down at her, a smile somewhere between indulgence and admiration. 

He had the sweetest smile. 

She wondered how his mouth would taste.

Her intoxicated train of thought slammed to a stop, alarm bells ringing in her head, in her ears, in her heart.

What was she doing?

She suddenly felt ill.

“Um, I’m gonna go inside.”

His smile fell abruptly. “You okay, Claire?”

“I’ve just...had too much,” she slurred slightly, rushing her words as she hurried to unlock her front door. “I’ll see you at work soon, okay?”

“Claire, wait,” he interrupted, holding the door above her head before she could shut it. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing, really! Nothing. Gotta go.” She shot him a half-hearted smile, avoiding his eyes as she slipped inside and pushed the door closed. Locking it behind her, something primal inside her made her lean up against the door, trying to be as quiet as possible as she looked out the peephole. 

He was still standing there, rubbing a hand over his eyes tiredly. He lifted his arm to knock on the door.

Claire held her breath.

Something made him think better of it, and he lowered his long, sturdy arm back down to his side. “Goodnight, Claire,” he called through the door, waiting for a moment to see if she responded before slowly trudging away.

Claire closed her eyes, pressing her face against the cool wooden paneling of the door. 

She was just an affectionate drunk. That’s all there was to it, she told herself.

She’d finally gotten her life together, gotten all her ducks in a row.

She couldn’t let anything fall out of line now. 

Not now. Not after working for so long, so hard to get to a place that she’d always wanted to be, both professionally and emotionally. 

They were friends. They were very good friends that had been lucky to have each other around for this long.

She wasn’t going to let herself screw that or anything else up.

Not now.

… 

Brad headed toward Claire’s station. She’d been doing battle with tempered chocolate again for the twix, and he knew she’d been getting fed up with its lack of cooperation. He’d been dividing his attention between his own project and hers -- probably a little too much toward hers. 

But that was just usually how things went. Her station was like a magnet to him. It was fascinating to watch her excel, to falter and then come back strong, to make things so much better than the original she’d been trying to copy had been. 

That, and being around her always felt like a breath of air after a long dive underwater. It felt right, it felt needed. It felt good. Claire was like his home base in the kitchen, and sometimes outside of it. 

“How’s the temper goin’, Claire?” He called out, strolling up to her counter. 

“Brad,” she started, her voice edged with exasperation. She began shooing him off with a flick of her hand. 

“Oh, sorry, bad timing?” He frowned, backing up. Had he done something to upset her? He still wasn’t sure what had happened at her apartment last week when she’d gone inside so abruptly without any explanation. She never brought it up, and it felt like something he shouldn’t ask about if she wasn’t going to volunteer the information unprompted. Still, it made him worry, unease simmering in the back of his mind. 

“You gotta go away and come back,” she instructed, still waving him off.

“Oh, okay.” 

“I love you Brad, can’t talk to you right now,” he heard her laugh from in front of him.

A huge grin worked its way onto his face. She wasn’t upset with him. And did she just say that on camera? 

His chest somersaulted. He couldn’t wipe the smile off his face even if he tried.

And maybe that meant something. But he couldn’t stop and think about that right now. He’d lose his mind if he did. 

And so he kept smiling as he hovered around Claire’s station, waiting for her to summon him again.

… 

When Peggy had asked to meet Brad at the diner near his house and silently pushed her engagement ring across the table to him, he should have been surprised, but he wasn’t.

In fact, a weird, sort of melancholy relief washed over him. As if the cells in his body were saying, _yes, it’s time_. _It has been for a while now._

He hadn’t known what he’d wanted for a long time. He’d only been able to focus on the small picture: he’d wanted the fighting to stop, he wanted them to both be happy again.

And it turned out that the best way to achieve that was to let each other go. 

They loved each other. They probably always would. But they weren’t _in_ love with each other anymore. 

“I think we both knew this was how it was going to be, when it cames down to it,” she said quietly. “We had our time, Brad. It’s just finally run out. I don’t think there was anything you or I could do about it.”

He pushed the ring back across the table. “Keep it. Please. It doesn’t feel right to take it back.”

Her fist closed around it gently. “No, I guess not, huh? Not after all this time.”

“I just want us both to be happy, y’know?” He said, surprised at how calm he felt as he spoke. “And I think you’re right. I think that means parting ways. Finding new paths.” 

She sighed, holding his eye, her gaze cautious. “I think I’ve already found one.”

Brad’s eyebrows lifted, not so much in surprise that she’d been seeing someone else, but more that she’d felt comfortable enough to tell him. She’d hardly told him anything lately. He expected that telltale wriggle of jealousy to turn in his stomach, but it never came.

Maybe they really had moved on. It just needed to be said out loud.

“I wish ya nothin’ but happiness, Peg. Really, I do.”

“I know,” she said, her voice woven through with relief and resignation. “You too.”

Brad stepped out into the rain, tugging his hat further down over his ears. Inside, two feelings conflicted within him, not in a hopeless war, but in soft, quiet disagreement: nostalgia for what used to be, and relief that now, maybe, just maybe, he could begin to move forward. 

#  _Summer, 2019_

Claire couldn’t believe Brad had managed to wiggle his way into a pairing with her for the perfect Thanksgiving dishes. It felt like an unexpected windfall. 

She loved all of her coworkers, don’t get her wrong, but at this point, Brad felt like a more chaotic, upbeat extension of herself. She never had to relax around him, it just happened instantaneously. She wanted his approval, but never hoped for it anxiously. She welcomed his suggestions, but was comfortable enough to make fun of them too. She welcomed projects that needed new tools and devices to achieve her goals, because she loved working with them alongside him as much as he loved putting them together. 

He just _got_ her. Against all odds, this hyper-active, too-loud, outdoorsy handyman just _got_ her, and it never ceased to amaze her. 

And now they were taking the pies they’d made together to Denver for a contest. 

“Y’know, what if when we got there, we just ditched the contest and ate our own pies instead? Once that pumpkin gets cold, there’s no guaranteein’ I’m gonna be able to resist it.”

“ _Brad_ ,” Claire groaned, smacking him lightly with the back of her hand from the seat next to him. “They’re gonna be filming this. You can’t ruin it.”

He smiled down at her. “You wanna win, don’t you?”

“How can you not?” Claire shrugged. 

“I dunno, Claire, I think our pie’s good, and we had a good time makin’ it, and we get to go to a fair. I feel like we’re already the winners.”

She smiled, readjusting her feet around the sides of the pie box to make sure it didn’t shift as the plane turned slightly. She was glad to see Brad happy, his mood light. When he’d told her a few months ago about splitting from Peggy, she could tell he was a little shaken up about it. Not sad, exactly -- anyone who knew them could tell that the split had just been biding its time, waiting in the wings for a long time coming. But Brad was, unfathomably, one of the most outgoing people-persons she’d ever met, and she knew that losing someone who’d been an important part of his life for so long was enough to throw him off a little, even if he was willing and ready to move forward. Recently, he’d been traveling a lot for his new series, and while she thought it really did him some good, she’d missed having him appear like some Jersey boy-fairy godmother at her station while they’d filmed her more recent _Gourmet Makes_. 

Having him back by her side again, this time nearly all to herself, was a balm to her fractious soul. 

A few weeks ago, she’d accidentally found a ring in Harris’s sock drawer that was unmistakably meant for her. The gold band, the glittering, oval-shaped stone was beautiful, if not completely to her taste. And she should have been expecting it. They’d been together for five years now, living together for one. It was the natural course the relationship should take. But somehow, it had taken her completely by surprise. 

Now, any time she was with him, she felt anxious, wondering which moment he would choose to ask her the question.

And the horrible, horrible thing was, she didn’t know what the answer would be. 

She loved Harris. They got on well. Things between them were easy, and their interests were often the same. 

But something in her was resisting the idea of moving forward. Never in her life did she picture herself having commitment issues -- and she didn’t. She committed to things, and by god, did she follow through. 

So why wasn’t she warming up to the idea of _this_ commitment now?

Maybe she just needed more time. She prayed that she’d get more time. 

But now she was here, on a plane with Brad, going to Denver to have their pies judged. And she could relax, if only for a moment. 

The rush of the airport had worn her out, and the headrest was never comfortable enough for her, no matter what she did.

So instead, she rested her head against the broad expanse of Brad’s shoulder, nestling into it. 

“I’ll wake you up when we’re about to land, don’t worry,” his voice came from somewhere above her as he patted her leg lightly.

Claire’s lips quirked. He remembered that she hated landings. Of course he did. 

… 

They hadn’t won the pie contest. They hadn’t even placed. A stab of disappointment had coursed through her. 

She wasn’t competitive about everything she did, but she was competitive about the things he considered herself good at, and those had been damn good pies. 

The camera crew had headed out to have their own fun, and Brad, ever-cheerful and unfazed, had momentarily disappeared in the direction of some tented kiosks, leaving her alone to sulk. Or so she thought. 

“How’s this for a consolation prize, huh?” His voice interrupted her inner grumblings as he ambled up to her, a large paper food container in hand. “I saw you shootin’ heart eyes at this earlier, but you probably thought you were too full or something. But you’re never too full for more bread, Claire, I’ve seen ya.”

He held it out to her, and the warm, sweet smell of cinnamon and butter wafted up, immediately making her mouth water.

He _didn’t_. 

She opened the carton, already knowing what it was. A braided loaf of still-warm bread, streaked through with cinnamon and tucked next to a small cup of honey butter, laid steaming inside. 

She hadn’t even said anything about it when they’d walked by. And yes, she _had_ wanted it. And yes, she _had_ thought that she’d be too full to enjoy it, even though bread was her favorite food. 

But Brad had paid attention. He’d known better. He’d understood. 

And all of a sudden, there it was. Hitting her with all of the force of a hurricane.

Her boyfriend loved her. But Brad _understood_ her.

And that’s what made the difference. That’s why she didn’t know what her answer to the ring would be. 

Prickling tears threatened to well in her eyes as she stared down at the bread in her hands. 

“Claire?” His voice was laced with concern now. “Claire, you’re not that upset about not winning anything, are ya? You know what we had was good. Just not what they were looking for in like, the middle of summer, y’know.” 

Reining herself in, trying not to shake with the realization she’d finally let herself have, she shook her head, avoiding his question by ripping off a warm piece of bread, dragging it through the honey butter, and shoving it in her mouth. She held the box out to him, offering to share. He willingly obliged.

“Man, some things are just worth the calories. Whoo, that’s good.” He sucked the excess cinnamon and sugar from his fingers, smacking his lips. “Good call, Claire,” he joked, knowing full well she’d never said a word about it. 

He checked the time at his wrist and let out a low whistle. “Oh man, we gotta get you to the airport or you’re gonna miss your connection. Come on, half-sour, time to walk and eat. Multi-task. I know you can.” 

The world suddenly returned as she snapped out of her reverie, louder and faster than it had been before. And now she had to get on a plane by herself, go to Cape Cod, and wait for him, alone with her thoughts and with feelings she had no idea what to do with.

There she’d be, with a boyfriend ready to propose at any minute and her, heartsick and unsure of her answer because of someone else.

Teenaged Claire would have eaten the idea of this scenario up. Adult Claire was paralyzed with indecision and fear -- fear of making a mistake, fear of hurting others, fear of hurting herself.

But she couldn’t let anyone see that right now.

“Let’s go,” she agreed, slipping her sunglasses on to avoid eye contact as he ushered her toward the parking lot. 

… 

Brad hadn’t expected to be back at Claire’s family home so soon, but here he was, back for another “Thanksgiving,” this time in the swampy heat of the August sun. 

But this time, his soul felt lighter. There was nothing now that he was missing out on, being excluded from. 

It was this newfound freedom, perhaps, that led him to finally admit the truth to himself. A truth he’d been keeping locked away from quite some time. 

When they’d finally left the chaos of the kitchen and all settled down around the table to try each others’ food, the pie had finally been cut, a piece being passed around for its due praise and admiration. 

Claire, ever the perfectionist, held it, her eyes fixated on the cross-section of the pumpkin custard. She scraped the tiniest piece off with her spoon, tasting it before anyone else could, making sure that if there was a fault, she was the first to know. 

“It’s good. It’s good,” she said finally with a relieved smile, her eyes locking onto his, reveling in the success of their joined efforts, the excellence of something they created together. 

And there it was. 

His heart wasn’t bursting with pride -- he was always happy to make something good, something that other people enjoyed, but he was never that prideful.

It was bursting with something else entirely. 

The revelation nearly knocked him off his feet.

Trying to recover in the midst of the pie merry-making, he’d distractedly eaten Rick’s pie entirely by accident. 

It was so obvious that he loved her. Why else would they always be revolving around each other like a planet and a star, a complementary orbit that left everyone else around them in the dust? Why else did nothing feel more like home than standing next to her at her work station, leaning down on his elbows to catch her eyes? Why else would he, the most outgoing person that he knew, still subconsciously skirt around Claire’s boyfriend at work parties after all these years?

He wanted it to be him instead. 

God, he wanted it more than anything. 

As everyone around him chatted away, eating pie and starting the slow processional back to the kitchen with empty dishes, he fell silent, heavy with the acknowledgment that Claire was still very much in a very serious relationship.

He’d never show her that kind of disrespect, asking her to leave someone for him. Even entertaining the _thought_ of asking something like that. 

Hell, he was getting ahead of himself. Claire was in a fucking long-term relationship. She definitely didn’t feel the same way about him. She probably never had.

And just as suddenly as his heart had swollen with all of this happy, brand new information that wasn’t really new at all, it deflated as reality swarmed in on him like floodwaters. 

“Brad?” Her voice ripped into his inner monologue like a knife made of familiarity. He looked around, realizing he was the only one still sitting at the table as everyone else bustled around, cleaning up, the camera crew dismantling their equipment and heading for the van. “You’re uncharacteristically quiet. You okay?”

“Yeah,” he replied too fast, embarrassed at the crack in his voice. “Yeah, just thinkin’. Just marinating in this food coma i’ve got goin’.”

“Mm,” she murmured, and he wasn’t sure if she was agreeing or just humoring him. Setting the serving spoons she’d been holding back down onto the table, she shuffled over to where he was sitting and stood behind him.

Suddenly, her arms were wrapping around his neck, her chin coming to rest on his shoulder. He felt the soft skin of her lips press against his cheek as her arms squeezed him gently, her fingertips grazing against the top of his chest. 

“I’m here for you if you need me, Brad. For anything. Always,” she added, her voice low and soft in his ear. The hair on the back of his neck stood up. 

Everything was happening _too much_ right now. He couldn’t process any of it. 

So instead, he reached up, wrapping a hand around the wrist that was resting near his collarbone. 

“Means a lot,” he replied, making herculean effort to keep his voice casual. 

She sighed, her warm breath tickling his neck. His eyes fell shut, savoring the moment for what it was, pretending it existed in a vacuum where nothing and no one else could hurt them. 

“I better go make sure they’re not breaking anything or my mom will kill me once you’ve all left,” she grumbled, and he felt the weight of her chin resting on him lift, leaving nothing but warm late-summer air and the burden of disappointment heavy on his shoulder. 

As she began to walk away, he kept his hand around her wrist, letting it slide down to wrap around her fingers. She only pulled away when she couldn’t reach him anymore. 

Watching her walk away, he tried to reconcile himself to the fact that he was helplessly, completely, and utterly _fucked_. 

… 

Since it’s not _real_ Thanksgiving, and nothing in town is closed, the kitchen crew heads out for a night at the bars, settling on a waterside pub, a shack of a bar painted pale gray and white and glowing in the orange wash of the setting sun. 

Or so Claire can imagine. She doesn’t really know, because she didn’t go.

Hosting exhausted her. The back to back trips from Denver to here had worn her out.

And more than anything, she was tired of the mental quagmire she’d so recently found herself in.

For a moment, she’d let herself think that Brad was an option. Seeing him so at ease in her home, cooking side by side with her again in her mother’s kitchen, feeling the heat of his body beside her, often _too_ close to her -- she’d entertained the revolutionary thought of breaking things off with Harris before it went too far. She didn’t want to be that person -- leading someone on while just waiting for a better option to come along. Hell, until now, another option had never occurred to her. She’d been happy with Harris all these years.

At least, she thought she had. 

She tried not to think of the reason they’d gotten together in the first place. 

But then.

 _But then_ , she’d seen Brad at the dinner table, so uncharacteristically lost in thought, a smile nowhere near his usually joyful mouth. 

And she’d known he’d been thinking about his ex. Missing her. Wishing for her. 

Brad wasn’t an option. She was absurd for ever thinking so. 

Which is why she was caught off guard when she’d gone downstairs, stepping down into the dimly lit, abandoned living room to find that it wasn’t as abandoned as she’d thought. 

“Brad?”

He looked up at her from the couch, where he’d been reclining, flipping through the TV guide on the sizeable flatscreen across from him.

“Hey,” he called, not moving his eyes from the screen.

“What are you doing here? Didn’t you want to go out with everyone? Have a couple of beers?”

“You guys have beer here,” he said lightly, lifting the bottle in his hand as proof of his statement. “Besides, I’m beat. Where I come from, post-Thanksgiving dinner activities usually mean ‘as little activity as possible’ and I’m pretty inclined to stand by that tradition.”

Claire smiled. “You and me both.” 

He patted the cushion next to him, shifting to make room for her. “Come sit. Hang out, if you want.” 

Remembering something, she changed course toward the kitchen. “I’ll be right there.”

She pulled what was left of the pumpkin pie from the fridge and tugged open the cutlery drawer. 

She groaned. The only thing left in it was a single spoon, the rest of its cutlery kin currently being scrubbed away in the middle of a dishwasher cycle.

Grabbing the spoon, she shut the drawer with her hip and padded back into the living room, her sock-feet silent against the hardwood floor.

“I’ve brought the goods,” she announced, rattling the pie tin in his face. 

“Oh, thank god. I’ve been thinkin’ about it for the last hour now, but I didn’t wanna be _that guy,_ ” Brad confessed, making grabby hands at the spoon.

“This was the only thing left in the cutlery drawer, hope you don’t mind,” she informed him as she sank onto the cushion next to him, tucking her feet up under her.

Brad shook his head. “Nah. If you could die from Saffitz cooties, I’d be long gone by now.” As she settled in, making herself comfortable, he lifted the spoon and the pie from her hands, yanking off the tin foil lid unceremoniously and digging in.

“What are we watching?” 

“ _Pawn Stars._ ”

“Not anymore, we’re not,” Claire snatched the remote from his lap, navigating to the Netflix screen and pressing play on the last _Great British Bake Off_ episode she’d started. 

Claire leaned sideways against the couch, turning her head to watch the beleaguered bakers try to temper chocolate with glee and tucking her toes under Brad’s thigh.

Unbidden, a spoonful of pumpkin appeared in front of her, and Brad gently tilted the spoon as she ate from it.

“Thanks,” she said around a mouthful of the cold, spicy custard filling, musing that Brad was right: it was better cold, straight from the refrigerator.

“No problem at all,” Brad replied, trying and horribly failing to mimic a British accent. 

Claire snorted. “You’re awful.”

“We know this, Claire,” retorted dryly around his own mouthful of pie. Claire leaned over, wanting another bite, only to look down and realize that he’d just eaten the last one.

“ _Brad,_ ” she said, exasperated (but not really). “We just started eating that like, 30 seconds ago, dammit.”

“Who am I to deny myself life’s simple pleasures,” he grinned indulgently, resting a hand atop her knee like it was nothing. 

And then, just for a moment, Claire let herself pretend. She let herself imagine that the reality she was experiencing was in a universe where things had worked out between them, where she was the one he’d given the ring to, and that her heart had never been afflicted by the bad timing and the confusion that she’d been battling with for over half a decade now. That they were just here, together and uncomplicated, on her mom’s couch, enjoying each other’s company, like they would for every night hereafter. 

And just for a moment, Claire found peace. 

… 

After they’d gotten back from Cape Cod, Brad was called out of the test kitchen for a week or two, busy filming off somewhere for future _It’s Alive_ episodes. She’d gotten a few messages from him here and there, but Brad was never a great texter -- he was bad at explaining things in writing, and he’d often put his phone down and completely forget to respond for hours at a time. It wasn’t anything like actually having him in the same room with you. 

Claire missed his presence greatly. She loved everyone else, but they _weren’t_ Brad, and couldn’t take his place. She hated when he was gone for this long, unbalancing things like a feather weighed against a brick.

And, bizarrely enough, she needed him around to calm her nerves. Harris still hadn’t proposed, and she was a wreck of anticipation. She hated surprises, and she hated questions that didn’t have 100% correct, black-and-white answers. This was all a nightmare. 

And then, in the middle of her wrangle with the mentos, there he was.

The surprise of looking up from the sink to see him standing across the room had caught her off guard. 

“I haven’t seen you in so long,” she called out, shaking her hands dry. 

As he made a bee-line for her station, something came over her that she usually kept out of the test kitchen.

Her love language, by far, was words of affirmation. But today, she just needed more.

She met him halfway across the kitchen, throwing her arms around his sturdy, broad chest, tucking her cheek against his heart. He immediately reciprocated, his hands rubbing up and down her back as he folded her into him.

“Have they finally broken you for real this time with their nasty little snack foods?” He asked in a warm voice, half-soothing, half-amused. 

She shook her head against him. “I just missed you,” she murmured into his chest. 

He was the one to pull back at last.

“I missed you too, Claire.” She was taken aback by the softness of his voice, the lack of teasing or light-hearted mockery she was almost expecting in this situation. ‘C’mon, show me what you’re working on.”

Later, after Brad had left her station to go check something out in the walk-in, she turned back to the camera crew.

“I know I say this a lot, but can you guys _please_ not use footage of that hug when you’re editing? For me? I just don’t feel like it needs to be used.”

“Scout’s honor, Claire. We’ve got your back.”

… 

Brad had called up Peggy, asking her to meet before she packed up and moved down to Pennsylvania for her new job. There was some stuff they needed to return to each other, and he desperately wanted his favorite Jets ballcap back. 

“Things going okay?” He’d asked her as they settled into the bar right near his house, one of their old, usual haunts. 

“They are,” she nodded, placing his cap on the table between them as she ordered a drink. “Let me ask _you_ something, though: have you finally made a move on Claire?”

Brad spluttered, nearly spitting out his beer. “I’m sorry…?”

“Don’t play dumb, even though you definitely are sometimes,” she teased. “Come on, Brad. I’m not blind. We’ve moved on, we have for a while now, and I’ve seen the way she looks at you. Everyone has. Like you’ve fuckin’ hung the moon.”

“Claire is currently living with her boyfriend of five years, so I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Brad replied evenly, though his heart was slamming erratically in his chest. 

“Oh, come on, Brad. Love is complicated. Relationships are complicated. You of all people should know, sometimes people stay in them even when they shouldn’t. There’s so many different reasons. Habit, comfort, fear, thinking you don’t have any other options -- the list goes on.”

“Claire’s not the type to put up with bullshit like that if she doesn’t feel like it,” Brad tried to reason, refusing to let the bubble of hope in his chest grow any larger. 

“She’s only human, Brad. I think there’s something there. Like I said before, _everyone_ sees it. I know you’ve seen the comments, even if you pretend not to.” She patted his hand. “You should at least consider saying something before it’s too late. Before you both do something you regret.” 

Brad fell silent.

What if she was right?

What if Claire didn’t think she had any other options?

What if they’d both been sitting around, pining, wasting time that they could have spent happily together?

“Maybe there’s some truth to what you’re sayin’, Peg,” he admitted, taking another deep swig of lager. 

She nodded. “Seriously. Think about it.”

Brad felt his cheeks flushing just at the thought of doing it, of the petrifying fear of ruining their friendship, or of the beauty of it making all the right difference in the world.

“Enough about me and this new bizarro-world where you offer me relationship advice,” he chuckled, trying to stay lighthearted. “Tell me about this new marketing gig you’ve got.”

“Oh man, wait till you hear about this new coworker I’ve got who breeds _monkeys._ I thought it was a joke up until last week, when I saw…” she continued on animatedly, and Brad encouraged her, nodding along at all the right times and sipping away at his beer. 

… 

“I need some time to think,” Claire finally said painfully, wringing her hands in front of her. 

Harris had finally popped the question, getting down on one knee in the middle of their walk through Central Park. 

Claire’s heart had nearly stopped when she realized what he was doing.

His face fell at her response. He got back to his feet. “Sure, yeah, of course.”

Her heart twisted. She didn’t want to hurt him. She didn’t want to hurt anyone. 

“No, no, no, I’m sorry, I love you, it’s just a really big commitment. Harris, you know how I have to overthink things, right? I overthink the amount of salt I put in boiling water. Of course I’m going to overthink a life decision this big. Just - just give me a little time, okay? I promise I’ll answer you soon.” She kissed his cheek, her heart pounding sickeningly in her chest. 

“How about - how about you go back to the apartment, and I’m gonna keep walking around for a little while, yeah? Just to clear my head.”

“Yeah,” he said almost warily, frowning. “I’ll be waiting for you. I love you so much, Claire, all right? Just think about it.” He put a hand to her waist as he leaned in to kiss her forehead and quietly turned to go, walking away from her, not looking back.

Claire wanted to scream. She hadn’t been ready for this moment. She didn’t know if she ever would have been ready for it.

And maybe...maybe that was a clue to what her answer should be.

She knew where she had to go to clear her head. She didn’t even have to think about it.

She turned around, walking south. Heading for the ferry to New Jersey. 

The closer she walked to Brad’s house, the more anxious she got. Her stomach writhed, threatening to explode with nerves. 

Spotting the bar Brad had taken her to a view times in the past, she crossed the street and headed toward it, desperate for just a quick dose of liquid courage. 

As she slipped in the front door, unsurprised to see it already crowded on a Saturday afternoon, she glanced toward the bar, trying to pick her poison.

But wait.

Brad was here.

Here with Peggy.

They sat in a back corner, laughing together over something she’d said. She reached across the table to lay her hand over his. 

This wasn’t happening.

This couldn’t be happening.

She slowly backed away, fumbling for the door, praying neither of them would look over.

And they didn’t. They were too absorbed in their conversation to notice her.

Outside, she sucked in a shuddering breath of air, angry that hot tears were springing into her eyes. 

She folded her arms tightly against her chest, as if that could keep something inside of her from breaking apart.

Of course Brad was getting back together with Peggy. They’d been together for so long before. And the split had seemed to hit him hard. Of course they’d found their way back to each other.

Of course that was what he wanted.

Claire wanted to slap herself for being so ridiculous.

She loved Harris. He loved her. They worked well together. 

Being with Harris was safe.

As she disembarked the ferry and headed back to her Manhattan apartment, her mind was made up. 

… 

Brad tried to psych himself up as he rode the elevator to the 35th floor.

Today was the day. 

He was going to tell Claire how he felt.

Yeah, of course he’d like to hear that she was secretly in love with him too, but he wasn’t going to push at all. That wasn’t what he was about.

He just needed to tell her. He needed her to know.

He didn’t think he could forgive himself if they lost any more time due simply to misperception and misunderstanding.

There was a good chance this was gonna go south, one way or the other, and he hoped that they’d be able to repair their friendship if it did. 

But a part of him laid low, like an unlit firework, hoping and praying that somehow, Claire loved him too.

He was going to ask her if she wanted to get drinks with him later. And if she agreed, he was going to lay it all on the line over a beer or two. A beer he’d no doubt desperately need.

As he turned the corner, his insides clenched mercilessly in anticipation.

When he stepped into the test kitchen, Claire’s back was to him, and she was surrounded by all of their coworkers in a clustered circle. Low exclaiming sounds reached his ears, but he couldn’t quite tell what they were saying. 

As he got closer, what he heard made his heart stop.

“It’s so beautiful, Claire, congratulations!”

“Are you gonna wear it while you’re filming today?”

“Hot damn, sister, that is a _rock._ ”

Brad froze.

No.

No, no no.

Morocco was the first one to notice him standing there.

“Hey, Brad,” he called pointedly, and the chatter quieted down noticeably.

He desperately wanted to close his eyes against the knowing looks some of the chefs were giving him. The _pitying_ looks. 

He cleared his throat, hiding his shaking hands behind his back and discarding his confessional plans like a wilted rose petal in the dirt. 

“Well look at that, half-sour,” he said a little too loudly. “Looks like your man finally wised up and realized what a gem he’d snagged. Congratulations.”

He nearly choked on the word like a bitter rind, a piece of gristle, a jawbreaker.

Her eyes only met his for a millisecond as she lowered her hand, pushing it out of everyone’s view.

“Thanks, Brad,” she said with a half-smile, sounding strained. 

Nodding politely, he pushed past everyone, heading for the fermentation station.

He didn’t have any projects planned for today, but he’d be damned if he didn’t come up with one for himself right here, right now.

He clenched his shaking hands into fists as he leaned over the counter, keeping his back to the room. The chatter slowly rose in volume again.

He wasn’t going to be able to get through this day in this room without shutting himself down in self-preservation. 

So that was what he was going to do.

Brad knew he was expected to basically be a recurring guest star on _Gourmet Makes_ at this point. That it boosted views. That it boosted Claire’s self-esteem, too.

But he just couldn’t do it today. Not after his hopes getting so violently dashed, not after seeing her keep the ring on deliberately for the cameras.

He loved Claire. So much. But he couldn’t do this.

So he stayed away from her work station, ignoring the nods of the crew trying to get him to come over. He busied himself with things that didn’t need doing, things that kept him working in the blurry background, or, even better, not on camera at all.

He couldn’t be that Brad today. He didn’t want to fix things.

He wanted to break them.

More than once, he felt Claire turn back, looking for him, wondering why he hadn’t stopped by. He refused to look up. 

At the end of the day, a day that felt like a thousand hours without sleep, he stumbled into his empty home, shrugged off his shoes and socks, and crawled into bed, desperate for the temporary oblivion that came in with the night. 

He stayed away from Claire’s station for the rest of the shoot. 

… 

Brad was so tired of Thanksgiving before Thanksgiving. But production schedules were tight, rigid, and Sean was his friend. So here he was again, merely on the cusp of fall, shooting a hot wings interview that was sure to be the death of him.

He tensed as he heard about guest coworker questions. He knew they’d ask Claire for the ratings alone. Everyone loved Claire.

Everyone.

And he was right.

“Now, we’ll take a visit from Claire,” Sean announced, pointing to the screen down below.

And there she was, wearing that cute pink top of hers and sporting her sultry new haircut. 

She looked so beautiful.

Brad ignored the pang in his chest as he kept his commentary light.

“Ol’ half-sour herself! Let’s see what she has to say.”

“Hey Brad,” on-screen Claire began. “It’s your friend Claire…”

“Hey Claire,” he responded softly, fighting to keep his face neutral. He couldn’t slip. Not a smile for his best girl, not a wistful look because she _wasn’t_ his girl. Nothing. 

Whatever he’d hoped would happen between the two of them was impossible now. Nipped in the bud. Sunk to the bottom of the Hudson river. 

And yet, as he sat there, listening to her voice through the screen, he still wished that she was here beside him, completing the other half of his broken circle once more. 

  
  


#  _Winter, 2020_

Claire could hardly believe they’d even been invited to this kind of thing. She didn’t own a piece of clothing formal enough for it. Hell, neither of them did. Neither overalls nor a backwards ballcap were acceptable attire for the Golden Globes red carpet. Condé Nast had to cover expenses for them to rent what they had on. 

Of course, it had made sense to send the two biggest channel stars to the event together. Of course, they’d only bothered with two tickets, so no one could bring their partners. 

Nothing about it felt right. 

There she and Brad were, standing side by side, her in a long black gown and cat-wing eyeliner and him in a tux and uncharacteristically combed hair. 

They didn’t recognize themselves.

Claire was used to the camera crew in the test kitchen. She knew that crew, she knew where they’d be, knew what they liked to see. But they weren’t in the test kitchen anymore. Now they were surrounded by paparazzi, by scores of professional videographers who were complete strangers, both in personality and in motive. 

As they walked the red carpet, photographers kept pushing the two of them closer and closer together, shouting to Claire about the designer of her outfit and about the ring on her finger. The cacophony of voices, the flashes, the sight of A-list celebrities walking in and out of her line of vision -- it was all way, _way_ too much. She felt her eyes glass over as her dissociating habit kicked in, as it always did when a social setting overwhelmed her. 

“We’re almost inside,” Brad’s voice murmured to her softly, his face not bent down as far as usual thanks to Claire’s 4-inch silver heels. As his fingers grazed the small of her back protectively, she began to come back to herself. 

As they finally entered the theater and were directed to their seats (all the way up in the dress circle), Claire tried to exhale, her eyes locked onto the expensive dark weave of Brad’s tuxedo jacket. Tracking what was (somewhat) familiar to her.

He looked good. He just didn’t look like _Brad._

And she didn’t look like Claire.

She didn’t even know if there _was_ still a Brad and Claire. 

Though they still interacted in the kitchen like usual, though they were still friends, a new, unfamiliar strained quality had emerged, failing to subside even as months passed by. 

She assumed he was still with Peggy. Thank god, he just never talked about it.

And she was still engaged to Harris. No wedding planning yet -- she refused to start that until she’d finished her book deal. 

Technically, nothing between them had changed at all, and yet, they just weren’t the same. The smiles felt forced. The banter inorganic. They barely spoke now when the cameras stopped rolling.

There was no formula she could use to figure out what happened. Something just _had._

And, all complicated feelings aside, she just missed her best friend.

She missed his unabashed laughter, his infectious energy, his good-natured teasing, the graze of his hands against hers as they worked on something in close quarters.

But if you don’t know what went wrong, you can’t fix it.

So there they were, dressed to the nines, sitting at the fucking Golden Globes together, and reaching for something to fill the silence with. 

“We’re probably the worst possible options they could’ve sent here, huh?” Brad said suddenly, shifting in an attempt to get more comfortable in his tux. 

“Right? I feel like we’re robbing others out of a good time. Could you imagine Rick here instead? Molly?” Claire shook her head. “God, at least they didn’t ask us to present anything. I would have died.”

“I know,” Brad said, smiling faintly. “I would’ve had to carry ya off stage like a sack of potatoes.”

Claire grinned. “That’s the truth.” 

And there he was, so close to her, smiling again. She wanted to say something. To use her words to test the waters. To see if they could ever be okay again. 

“You know, if I had to be here,” she began quietly, clearing her throat self-consciously. “If I had to be here, I’m glad it was with you instead of anyone else.” 

His eyebrows raised. 

Maybe she’d said the wrong thing. Considering she had a fiancé, she’d almost definitely said the wrong thing.

But she couldn’t bring herself to take it back.

“That’s real sweet of ya to say, Claire,” he finally said back, gazing down at her, something between sadness and a smile radiating from his expression as their noses nearly grazed.

“I’m not just saying it,” she replied earnestly. She cared about him so much, and he needed to know. “I mean it. You’re my best friend, Brad. No one knows me like you do. And I’m glad we’re in this together.”

His gaze held hers, unusually serious. She could tell there were words he wanted to say, and he was taking a rare moment of reflection, trying to decide if he would say them or not.

She leaned in even closer, waiting.

Around them, the lights dimmed heavily, throwing them into darkness as the spotlights trained on the curtained stage below. 

She felt rather than saw him lean away from her, settling back in his own seat to face forward. 

Sometime around halfway through the show, Claire’s hand accidentally knocked against Brad’s as she’d adjusted the skirt of her dress. Her heart leapt into her throat when she felt his hand chase hers, closing around it and weaving her fingers through his own. She tried to glimpse him in her peripheral vision, afraid of turning her head and breaking the moment. His face was forward, his eyes trained on the presenter at the podium. Claire sat back in her own seat, trying to relax her shoulders like Brad had once told her to do, lifetimes ago now. 

The warmth of his palm swallowed hers whole, and she squeezed his gently, a silent acknowledgement -- of what, she didn’t know. 

Softly, he squeezed hers back. 

Afterward, if you’d asked her, Claire couldn’t tell you who’d won a single award from that moment of the show onward. 

… 

The test kitchen Valentine’s party was something Brad had planned on skipping out on all together. He loved a good party, sure. He definitely didn’t begrudge anyone happiness, and he knew he wouldn’t be the only single one there, but he still just wasn’t in the mood to act all jolly and _fine_ around Claire and her fiancé. 

He didn’t know if he ever would be.

He could manage being around her all right now, even if there was a distance between them on a chemical level that hadn’t ever been there before. Hell, even so, he felt ill at the thought of not having her there, of losing the familiarity of her back to him while she was at her station and he was at his. Even if they couldn’t go back to how things were, or could have been, a life without Claire wasn’t an option he could stomach.

However, he could definitely do without the Claire/Harris combo at a party based around schmaltz and affection. 

But Morocco and Gaby had basically bullied him into attending, working hard to convince him of his integral value as a member of the test kitchen family, and, always the people pleaser, he’d given in.

So now, here he was, on his fifth beer, cracking jokes in the corner with Hunzi and some of the crew, pushing himself toward drunk when he realized that buzzed wouldn’t be enough to get him through the evening. 

Averting his eyes from Claire and Harris, who were chatting away on the opposite side of the room, his arm looped casually around her waist, would have been the smart thing to do. But Brad had never considered himself to be very smart, and his eyes snapped toward her magnetically, the pull growing stronger and stronger with every bottle he reached the bottom of. 

Hunzi watched him practically pouring the rest of his fifth drink down his throat, frowning all the while.

“Brad, you know you’ve got a flight out tomorrow morning to Texas for the brisket video for a week, right? And then the next week to New Mexico for the pickled peppers? And that after that you’re flying straight out to Washington to meet everyone else for the next _Making Perfect_ video? Shouldn’t you oughta pace yourself a bit?” Hunzi clapped his shoulder in concern.

“Ah, no worries, Hunz. I’m a big guy. Takes a lot to get me on the floor.”

“Doesn’t take a lot to get you hungover, though. Trust me, you think I don’t notice, but I do.”

Brad groaned. “Fine, fine, this is the last one, okay? You’re welcome, _mom_ ,” he retorted sloppily. 

“I know it isn’t easy to watch, man,” Hunzi said, his voice a little kinder this time.

Brad pretended he didn’t hear.

Claire nursed her first and only wine glass, stepping uncomfortably from foot to foot. She’d have liked to have had more, but something about this setting -- and the specific people in the room -- made her want to retain all control of her physical and mental faculties. Drunk Claire right now would feel to her like lighting a match near a powder keg.

She’d noticed Brad’s eyes drifting over to her all night. She’d noticed because hers had been drifting to his, too. 

Binary stars, still orbiting after all this time. 

She’d noticed his wild gestures getting sloppier, his voice getting louder. She hadn’t seen him this drunk in a while. 

It was worrying.

When she got the chance, she half-circled the room, leaving Harris to chat with Chris as she pulled Rick aside.

“Hey Rick, why didn’t Brad bring Peggy to the party tonight? Is everything okay with them?”

Rick’s eyes narrowed, and he tilted his head at her in a baffling sort of way. “What are you talking about, Claire?”

“Peggy? His fiancée? Why wouldn’t he bring her to a Valentine’s party, of all things?”

Rick just stared at her, his eyes widening. “Holy shit,” he muttered, entirely nonplussed. “Oh, my god.”

Claire’s blood pressure began to rise. “Rick, _what_?”

“I can’t believe you don’t know. I can’t believe it.”

“Don’t know what?” Claire nearly spat out, riddled with anxiety.

“Peggy’s not Brad’s fiancée. They’ve been split up since last spring, which I _know_ you knew about. They never got back together, Claire. Brad’s been single for almost a year now. Did you really not know this?”

Claire, who’d always considered herself a sturdy, strong-stomached girl, felt like she was going to faint.

Brad wasn’t still with Peggy. He hadn’t been back with her. This whole time.

She’d made a major life decision. Based on a giant, absurd fucking _misperception_. 

She felt the urge to throw up, bile rising in her throat. She swallowed shakily, wringing her hands together behind her back, her wine glass abandoned on the counter beside them.

Rick let out a low whistle. “You didn’t know.”

She wordlessly shook her head, her gaze fixated on the floor, paralyzed. 

“This changes something, doesn’t it,” he said quietly, his words loaded. “We all wondered. Didn’t really understand.” He exhaled sharply. “Well, Claire.” He rested a hand on her shoulder. “It’s not too late. Almost, but not yet.” Rubbing her arm comfortingly, he moved past her, shuffling toward Molly, who was standing by the drink table.

The sound of glass breaking snapped Claire back into the reality of her surroundings. Her eyes bounced around the room, searching for the source of the noise. 

Her chest clenched as she realized what it was.

Brad leaned against the counter in a darkened corner of the room, off-kilter and laughing, a beer bottle with a broken neck at his feet and a trickle of blood dripping down his hand.

“Dammit, Brad,” she muttered under her breath, heading immediately for the first aid kit in the corner cabinet, snatching it from the shelf, and hurrying toward him.

Drunk Brad was apparently highly amused by his injury, as he kept staring down at it and bursting into peals of laughter. Hunzi was hovering around him, trying to get him to stand still, helplessly directing him to no avail.

“I’ve got it, Hunzi,” Claire sighed. “Go enjoy the party, okay? I’ll take over babysitting duties for a little bit.” 

“Did you just call me baby?” Brad slurred, grinning down at her. “Damn, Saffitz. Puttin’ the moves on me.” 

Claire rolled her eyes, ignoring the erratic pound of her heart as she dug out some disinfectant, some gauze, and a length of stretchy bandage.

“Brad, you’re a mess,” she murmured, reaching for his bloodied palm. He let her take it obediently. 

“Aren’t we all?” He said back, nodding his head to a nonexistent beat. 

Claire disagreed. No, she wasn’t supposed to be a mess. She was never a mess. She’d had her shit together up until the past 90 seconds or so.

“This is gonna sting a bit,” she warned, dousing his palm in rubbing alcohol before he could protest.

“It ain’t too bad,” he thoughtfully reassured her, only flinching once.

“Please be more careful next time, Brad, okay?” Claire asked as she wrapped the bandage around his hand over the gauze. There was something in his eyes, something sorrowful that she couldn’t quite pin down, and it was eating at her sickeningly. 

“Claire.” He said her name drunkenly, reverently, bending down to match her eye level. His gaze probed hers, sweet and warm and blue and frightening all at once. 

“Do you know what I wish?” He continued in a low, impossibly soft voice. 

Claire swallowed thickly. “What, Brad?”

His gaze dropped briefly as he blinked, rapidly, before dragging his eyes back to hers again.

“I wish I’d met you sooner. Then we wouldn’t keep missing each other, y’know.” He lowered his forehead to rest against hers, leaning against her with the slightest of pressure. “Like ships in the night, or somethin’.”

Claire’s chest physically pained her. Was this it? Was this what a heart attack felt like? Could your heart actually break hard enough to send you into full cardiac arrest?

Because that’s what this felt like.

“Brad,” she whispered, pressing her forehead back against his. Hot tears swam in her eyes, spilling over onto her cheeks and down to her chin. 

The magnitude of the moment swelled, deafening in its silence, suffocating in its helplessness. 

“Don’t cry, Claire,” he slurred, reaching up to thumb a tear away from her chin. “I can stand anything but you cryin’.” He pressed his uninjured hand to his chest as if he was wounded there, too. 

“Hey Claire!” Harris’s voice ripped into their second of time from across the room, shattering the space around them like the bottle at their feet.

“Oh my god,” Claire choked out. “I’m sorry.” She stumbled away from him, leaving them both swaying. “I’m so, so sorry,” she repeated hopelessly, scraping at her face to get rid of the tracks of her tears, frantically backing away from him and toward her fiancé. As she yanked her gaze away from his, her heart throbbed obscenely, fighting to keep the bond they shared from snapping in two. 

“Coming!” she called back, cringing at the strangled sound of her own voice. 

… 

“Claire.”

Just the tone of his voice was all she needed to know.

She knew what was coming.

There’s no way he hadn’t seen.

The question is, how was she going to handle this?  
Slowly, she hung her coat on a kitchen chair back. She bent to unlace her boots, but something made her reconsider.

She left them on. Just in case. 

“I think it’s time to be honest with each other, don’t you think?” His voice was flat, tired. Claire’s entire body tensed. Confrontation wasn’t something she had the emotional capacity to handle right now.

“I saw what happened, Claire.” He ran a hand down his face. “You’re in love with him. I think you have been for quite some time.”

“Harris, you know I love you,” she said. And she was telling the truth. She loved him. And he loved her.

But they didn’t _understand_ each other the way that they should. And sometimes, love wasn’t enough.

“I actually do believe you, Claire. I just...know that you love him more. That you’re _in_ love with him.”

“Wait-”

“I watch your videos religiously, Claire. Come on. I’m tired of pretending like I don’t see what everybody else in the universe sees. Everyone already knows the end of your story, Claire -- and I’m not in it.” 

Claire gritted her teeth in frustration. “They have no idea what they see, Harris. Don’t make this about that.”

“Chemistry is universal, Claire. And it’s there. In tons. You’d have to be wilfully ignorant not to see that,” he explained blandly, his face resigned.

“Harris…” Claire paused, scrambling for words. For reasons to try and change his mind.

Somewhat alarmingly, she couldn’t think of any valid ones. 

“Claire, I don’t want to have to compete for you for the rest of my life,” he said finally.

For the second time that night, Claire felt like she was going to be sick. 

Because everything he said had been right. She didn’t have a leg to stand on here.

And maybe, for the past half decade, she’d been a horrible person, lying to herself and everyone else around her about her heart. Dragging another person who loved her this far into the quagmire. 

She wasn’t lying when she said she loved Harris.

She just couldn’t be with him anymore.

She couldn’t fool herself _anymore._

Slowly, she reached down, slipping the ring off her finger.

“I’m so sorry,” she croaked, her shoulders slumping as she deposited it onto the counter in front of him. 

“I know,” he said, not unkindly, his face unreadable.

“I’ll stay with a friend for awhile until I find a new place,” she said, offering him at least one thing she could give him. Space. “Let me just get a few of my things and I’ll work on having the rest of it moved out soon, okay?”

He nodded silently, picking up the ring and twiddling it between his fingers. 

Suitcase in hand, she walked out onto the sidewalk, her mind scrambling for a place to go. Wondering if anyone was even home from the Valentine’s party yet. In the past, it was always Brad’s place she’d visit above anyone else’s. But she couldn’t. Not now.

Brad was definitely still at the party, and he had to get up early in the morning for two back-to-back weeks of on-location filming. She wouldn’t see him again until they all went to Washington for the next _Making Perfect_ episode. 

She kind of felt like she didn’t deserve to see him.

Claire refused to let herself be the person who ran straight into the arms of someone else mere minutes after breaking off an engagement and years-long relationship. 

She wouldn’t. 

No, not even in her inner turmoil, would she allow herself to do that. She respected Harris too much. 

So, as she stood on the sidewalk, her heart churning with heartbreak, confusion, loss, and relief in a dizzying swarm of pandemonium, she scrolled through her contacts and hit dial.

“Hey, Chris? I have a really, really huge favor to ask…”

  
  


#  _Two Weeks Later_

Brad rolled down the window in the cab, despite the cold air whipping by outside. He’d been in the Southwestern US for the past two weeks, and he’d gotten sick of the desert. It hadn’t felt right. Too flat. Too dry. Not enough green things.

Now, on the way to the cabin the test kitchen had rented for _Making Perfect_ : _Seafood Feast_ edition, the two-lane road was flanked by towering, fresh-smelling fir and pine trees, lush and thick and green and perfuming the damp, chilly air. 

It had been a while since he’d been near the Puget Sound, and he was genuinely excited to be in a cabin full of friends in a forest near the water. 

He was nervous, too, though. 

Claire was going to be there. He hadn’t seen her since the scene they’d accidentally made -- he’d accidentally made -- at the test kitchen Valentine’s party. He felt embarrassment rise and redden his cheeks every time the thought about it. He didn’t regret what he’d said, necessarily. He just hated _how_ it had happened.

And if that weren’t enough, he’d gotten a message from Morocco the day after he’d left for Texas, telling him that Claire had broken up with Harris. That she was staying in his family’s spare room until she found a new place.

Of course, it was entirely possible that something completely unrelated had caused the break-up so soon after the test kitchen party, or that it had been building for a long time. But part of him thought that there was just _no way_ it was really pure coincidence. 

Which, naturally, led to the conclusion that there was a chance that whatever he’d said to Claire had mattered. That it had something to do with Claire and her fiancé breaking the engagement.

Brad wasn’t a dick. He didn’t want anything or anyone to ever hurt Claire. And he knew as well as anyone how confusing and upsetting a foundering engagement could be. 

But he couldn’t deny that his heart sped up a little bit at the thought that he might still have a chance to be the one who makes her happy. 

He couldn’t deny that the sight of that text message hadn’t sent him up, out of a quiet despair that he’d been unable to shake for months. It sparked something in him.

Still, he had no idea what had happened, and he might never find out. He’d give her space if it seemed like she wanted it.

He was just excited to see his best friend again. Two weeks without her had always been far, far too long.

Maybe now, things could begin to mend between them.

As the cab dropped him off in front of the cabin, Brad raised his eyebrows, impressed. It was a massive, two-story wooden structure, big enough to sleep 7 chefs and a camera crew, nestled into the trees. To the left of the driveway, Brad could see the white-blue water sparkling in the distance, still bright despite the cloudy skies above. No other houses were visible from where he stood.

It was fantastic.

Smoke was swirling from both stone chimneys at each end of the cabin, and at the sound of the car door shutting, some of the chefs trickled out onto the front porch, calling to him and waving. He’d been the last one to fly in. 

Shivering a bit in his thin coat, he called back to them, heading for the golden light pouring from the front door. He tried not to let his face fall as he realized Claire hadn’t been one of the ones to venture out and greet him. 

“Lookin’ cozy, folks,” he said cheerfully, rubbing his hands together for warmth. “Hey Rick! Molly! Make some room for me over by that fireplace.” Brad dropped his duffel bag by the front door and trekked over to the wide fireplace, relishing in the warm crackle of the flames. His eyes surveyed the room quickly, only to find it very Claire-less.

He wasn’t going to ask. He wasn’t going to do anything to make it weird.

“Hey Carla, you ready to make our clam chowder tomorrow?” Carla was curled up in an armchair nearby, reading something in a magazine. They’d been paired up for the challenge this time -- he and Carla on the clams and squid, Rick and Molly on the crab and shrimp, Chris and Andy on the salmon and halibut, and Claire, unfortunately alone, had been given accompanying breads. She’d been kind enough to make mini-bread bowls for the chowder Brad and Carla had concocted, but she hadn’t had the chance to work much alongside them at all. 

Carla laughed. “The better question is if _you’re_ ready, Brad,” she grinned. “Did you know we’re going out in the morning to pull our own clams?”

“Goddammit,” he muttered. “That water’s gotta be freezing. What the fuck is this, _The Amazing Race_?”

“I think you mean _Survivor_ , but no,” Morocco chimed in. “Hey, you were pissed about missing out on clamming during perfect Thanksgiving, so here’s your chance,” he said slyly.

“Goddamn, Rapo,” Brad swore lightheartedly. He would’ve brought his rubber waders if he’d known. 

“Oh, Claire, finally,” Rick piped up, and Brad nearly gave himself whiplash.

There she was, swathed in a giant argyle turtleneck, leggings, and woolen socks, padding into the living area with a tray full of peanut butter cups, marshmallows, and graham crackers in one hand, and a handful of stretched out wire hangers in the other.

“I haven’t had s’mores in _so_ long,” Molly groaned, making grabby hands at Claire’s smorgasbord. 

Claire didn’t look up as she moved toward the fireplace. And when she did, she didn’t meet his eyes.

Brad’s stomach clenched anxiously. Why wasn’t she looking at him? Had he been wrong to even hope?

“The peanut butter cups instead of chocolate bars was such a good idea, Claire,” Morocco chimed in, reaching for a marshmallow as Claire passed out the stretched wire hangers. 

Why wasn’t she talking? Brad drummed his fingers against his jeans, full of nervous energy.

Silently, she handed a makeshift marshmallow roaster to him as well, still not making eye contact.

People gathered around the fire in turns, chatting away and toasting their marshmallows.

Brad had to say something. He couldn’t take the silence, the awkward quietness between them crawling under his skin.

“So how ya been, half-sour?” 

A beat passed before she finally looked up, her eyes resting gently on his. 

Another beat.

Then, slowly, shyly, she smiled.

“A little messier than I’m used to, but I’m doing all right,” she answered. “I’m glad you finally made it. There was no one here this morning to take my side when I got ganged up on for taking too much room on the counter for the bread.”

Brad shrugged, relief racking his body. He felt the muscles in his back, in his chest loosen. She was talking to him. She _smiled_ at him. 

“Well, ya gotta cut ‘em some slack, Claire. No one else has been on a sourdough journey like you and I have. No one else has walked that dark and terrible road.”

She giggled at him, her eyes mirthful and crinkling at the corners. He hadn’t seen her laugh with him like that in a while.

It was a beautiful sight.

… 

Claire shouldn’t have been that anxious about Brad suddenly being in the same room as her again. He was a coworker. He was a friend. 

But the last time she’d seen him, they’d almost caused a meltdown in front of the entire kitchen. 

And since then, she’d finally let herself be truthful. She’d acknowledged what she’d been keeping locked away, airtight, for so long. She’d broken off a fucking _engagement._

She couldn’t shake the nerves if she’d tried. 

There was something about being in the same space as Brad, knowing that there was no longer a single obstacle keeping them apart, that made her unfathomably shy.

It shouldn’t have taken her a full ten minutes to look him in the eye, but it had.

And once she had, everything else just melted away. 

Because in the past two weeks, she’d had an epiphany. One that had been a long time coming. One that she’d pushed down, ignored, flat out denied, over and over again.

You see, Claire didn’t easily give away her heart. But it was missing from her now, even though she’d never reached into her chest, carved it out, laid it on a silver platter, and bestowed it to another. 

It had been missing from her for years.

Brad had made it his own the day he met her. 

And now they were here, together, unattached to anyone else, all baggage seemingly discarded at the door. 

Claire was practically dizzy with the possibilities. 

And laughing with him felt so good again.

“Uh, Claire, your marshmallow is kinda…” Brad grimaced in the direction of the fire.

Her marshmallow had fully caught, orange flames licking around its sides and blackening its exterior.

“Dammit,” she grumbled, quickly blowing the flame out. “I hate burned marshmallows.”

“I know, I remember,” he laughed. Claire frowned as she tugged the smoldering nightmare from the end of her coat hanger. “Here, I’ll eat it for ya. No need to make ya suffer or for it to go to waste.”

“Thanks Brad,” she smiled again. She couldn’t stop smiling at him. It was going to get embarrassing here in a minute. Realizing it was a little stuck to her fingers, she reached up, offering it to his mouth instead. 

He grabbed her hand, wrapping his fingers around her wrist to hold it in place as he sucked the marshmallow from her thumb, his warm lips brushing wetly against her skin.

Oh, _god._

The smile finally slid off her face as she fixated on the feeling of his mouth on her skin, wondering what it would feel like on other places. To be held still under his big, warm hands while he trailed kisses down the side of her neck.

Jesus _christ._

She could _not_ let her mind go there right now.

“Yep, it’s burned all right,” he confirmed, shaking his head. He didn’t seem to notice that her wrist was still in his grip. 

Claire snapped her eyes to the fire, willing her heart rate to slow. “I...uh. I gotta go turn the sourdough. I’ll be back.”

Feeling his eyes trail her as she hurried into the kitchen, she hoped he wouldn’t follow her into it.

Or, actually, maybe she hoped he _would_. She didn’t know. She couldn’t think straight right now. 

She set the square container onto the counter, focusing on the feeling of the dough as she reached in to lift it from the bottom and shift it into a new resting position. 

She did it slowly, waiting to see if he’d appear around the corner.

He didn’t.

It was fine, she tried to tell herself. They were here as a group to enjoy each others’ company, and besides, you never knew when the crew would be filming for b-roll footage. 

She washed her hands and wandered back into the living room.

He’d saved her a s’more, the marshmallow toasted to a perfect golden shade.

… 

“Claire, you didn’t have to come clamming with me, y’know. It’s freezing out here and we all know your nature tolerance is lower than mine.”

Brad had been surprised to come downstairs early that morning to find not Carla standing there with a steaming mug of coffee, but a very sleepy-eyed, bundled up Claire.

The two gals had been paired up to share a bedroom, and apparently Carla had woken up feeling too hungover to venture out into the frigid wilderness at this hour. 

And, most incredibly unlike her, Claire had volunteered to go instead. 

“I didn’t want you to have to go alone,” Claire answered, pausing once to yawn. “Besides, I kind of like the morning vibe here. Foggy, quiet, ominous forest. It’s kind of witchy.”

“You’re not about to go all Harry Potter freak on me _again,_ are you?” Brad teased, leading them down through some thickets and toward the water. 

He could almost hear Claire scowling behind him. “No, but they’re fucking good books, you know.”

“I know, I know. What is it you said I was again? A Grinchindorf?”

Claire snorted. “A Griffindor. Definitely. Brave to the point of stupidity.”

“Well gee, thanks for that, Claire. Someone’s feelin’ a little more than just half-sour today.” He paused at the edge of the water, waiting for her to join him. 

“Oh, god,” she muttered, her breath visible in an icy puff. 

“And you said we definitely gotta take our shoes off for this?” Brad eyed the gently waving water skeptically. 

“Uh-huh,” she said reluctantly, bending down to drop her mesh net, pull off her boots, and roll up her fleece-lined leggings. 

“Here goes nothin’ then,” Brad said gruffly, yanking off his own shoes. 

Gasping expletives filled the air as they waded in, waist deep. The water was cold to the point of sharpness, a stabbing wave of pain running up and down Brad’s body. 

“Let’s make this fast,” Claire choked out, clinging to her net and shoving her arm down into the water. Brad joined her, brushing his fingertips along the bottom of the bay.

“Brad, that’s my finger, not a clamshell,” Claire snapped, laughter in the edges of her voice.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, fumbling in a different direction for the shellfish. 

They worked quickly, scrambling in the water, frantically tossing clams one by one into the net. 

About fifteen minutes later, Brad held the net up for examination.

“I-” he shuddered. “I think that’s enough. Let’s call it quits. For the love of god, let’s get outta here.”

“Seconded,” Claire replied around chattering teeth. 

“Huddle for warmth, huddle for warmth,” Brad chanted like a mantra as they waddled back across the forest, dripping very cold, briny water. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, and he felt her arm steal around his waist, clinging tight to him. It would have been a great moment if they hadn’t been half an hour away from hypothermia.

“And so the dream team becomes the dreamsicles,” Morocco observed over a cup of black coffee, standing at the kitchen counter in a thick robe and slippers as the two of them stumbled hurriedly into the kitchen. 

“Chris,” Claire chattered, stomping her feet against the wooden floor. “Can you please put those on ice for us? If we don’t get hot showers _stat_ then we’ll both die from the cold and then sue Rapo for liability.”

Morocco laughed. “I don’t think it’ll work in that order, but yeah. I’ve got it. You guys go on.”

They stumbled toward the stairs, aiming for the four bathrooms scattered down the second-floor hall. Brad prayed at least two of them were open. 

“I can’t feel my feet anymore,” Claire groaned, shuffling ineffectively. “I’ll just sit down until I thaw.”

“So dramatic,” Brad chided, shaking his head. She glared up at him, sinking ungracefully to the bottom step with a thud. “Just, just come on.” Brad leaned down, wrapping one arm behind her back and the other under her knees and scooping her up against his chest.

“ _Brad_ , what are you-”

“Shh, Claire. I’m just delivering ya to where ya need to go.” He held her tightly against him, wondering if the hands she’d looped around his neck could feel the quickened pulse in his veins. 

She stared up at him sternly, her face closer to his than he’d expected. He didn’t look away, and her eyes softened the further up the stairs he got, fading from annoyed to tranquil. Her skin was flushed pink and rosy from the cold, and he wanted to cover every bit of it with his mouth. 

He walked her down the second floor hallway, still quiet in the early morning. It felt like a strangely reverent thing to do -- like she was his bride and he’d just carried her over the threshold. 

Finding an open door, he flicked the light on with his elbow and set her down on the marble countertop of the sink. Only then did his awareness of the cold return to him, and did he remember that they were both still dripping icy saltwater everywhere around them. 

He moved past her and tugged the shower handle, turning it almost all the way to hot.

“See ya on the other side,” he said, attempting a casual tone and dubiously succeeding. As he headed for the door, he heard a soft “thanks, Brad,” over the pouring sound of the shower stream.

As the door closed behind him, he forcefully shut down the thoughts in his brain of him staying, of them thawing out together under the welcoming hot water and a room full of steam. 

“Get it together, Leone,” he muttered to himself as he headed for a shower of his own. 

… 

“I think they’re ready to come out,” Claire announced, peering through the oven door. The sourdough bread bowls had risen and browned, slicing through the fishy scent of the kitchen with a different, yeasty aroma. All she had to do now was carve the centers out of them, and they’d be ready for Carla and Brad’s chowder. 

Hunzi stood behind her, his camera trained on the oven as well.

“Here, let me get the door for ya,” Brad said over the din of the kitchen chaos, reaching down with a flourish and pulling the handle.

A wave of heat hit Claire as she stretched her arms toward the oven rack, her quilted mitts grasping it securely and shaking the baking sheet toward her.

“They look fantastic, Claire. Adding class to anything I make, as usual.” 

Claire got out a thick serrated bread knife, slicing holes into the top of the small loaves. She popped one of the centers into her mouth, relishing in the warm, slightly tangy crumb of the bread. 

“Hey, hit me with one a’ those,” Brad waved her in his direction. “It’s not every day I get to try something made by Claire that doesn’t have diabetes-inducing levels of sugar.”

Claire laughed, nudging his arm in mock-remonstrance as she held another piece of bread up to his mouth. He chomped it down, making a satisfied noise as he chewed.

“Perfect, Claire.” He shot her a double thumbs up.

Claire was suddenly taken back to the county fair in Colorado last summer, remembering how Brad had bought her cinnamon bread, anticipating how much she’d wanted it without her ever even saying a word. 

If she’d known then what she knew now, things would have looked so, so different. 

She chewed on her bottom lip, trying not to fret over lost time. 

“Hey Claire, you want some of this claw meat?” Rick waved at her from across the kitchen, dangling an entire steamed dungeness crab in his fingers like it was a little puppet or a stuffed animal. She giggled, heading over to him.

“And don’t share it with Brad, for christ’s sake. He’s already had some but I know if you ask him, he’d lie.”

“You _snitch_!” Brad’s voice boomed playfully from the stove, where he and Carla loomed over a steaming silver stock pot. 

“Guys, we’re sitting down in 5 minutes!” Molly called out, already plating her shrimp ceviche. 

As they all finally settled into the dining room, Claire’s breath caught as Brad sat down next to her. Had he scooted his chair closer to hers, or had she just imagined it?

Something about his close proximity took her appetite away -- she felt much too keyed up to be hungry. All she could think about was Brad, with his strong arms and broad shoulders and infectious smile, leaning into her space.

She wanted to crawl into his lap and kiss him breathless, dinner be damned.

But Claire was never one to cause a scene, and she certainly wasn’t going to start now. 

Her heart did a somersault as Brad reached for his fork and grazed his knuckles against the back of her hand.

She was absolutely done for. 

… 

Brad tried to pretend, as everyone gathered around the fire, chatting with wine glasses in hand, that he’d only just noticed Claire wasn’t in the room.

This, of course, was a flagrant lie. He’d been acutely aware of Claire’s presence or lack thereof for every second of time he’d spent in this cabin. 

Making an excuse that he was sure no one believed, he left the room, heading back toward the kitchen. 

Claire was standing at the wide kitchen island, munching on one of the brown sugar oatmeal cookies she’d made earlier this afternoon.

Brad smiled to himself. Sometimes he wondered if Claire had ended up with an extra sweet tooth, making up for the one that he lacked.

“You gonna come join us?” He asked her, gesturing to the doorway behind them. “There’s wine.”

Claire dusted the crumbs from her hands and hoisted herself up onto the island counter.

“Maybe in a little bit,” she said. “Social battery’s starting to run a little bit low.” She chuckled. “I wish I could borrow some of your charge. You’re like the energizer bunny of socializing, you know?”

Brad hesitated. “Should I leave you alone for a while then? Let you power back up?”

Claire shook her head, shooting him a small smile. “No. You don’t really count when it comes to this kind of thing.”

Brad fought back a smile.

Maybe he was something special to her, too, then.

He sauntered further into the kitchen. He leaned against the counter next to her, bracing his hands against the lip of the island’s granite top instead of sitting down on top of it. This way, she was actually at eye level with him. Her feet swung back and forth next to him almost whimsically.

The air all but crackled around them. 

“I broke off my engagement because of you,” she said suddenly, slicing through the silence like a magnificent roll of thunder.

Brad thought that his knees might have buckled if he hadn’t been bracing himself up on his hands.

His blood sang in his veins. He was about to start something that wouldn’t be easily stopped.

Slowly, he shifted so that he was standing in front of her, bracing his hands on the counter on either side of her hips this time. Her face was slightly above his, and he lifted his eyes to hers, letting himself be swallowed up by the warm chocolate shade of her eyes. A lock of her hair fell forward, and he lifted a hand to gently tuck it back behind her ear.

“Claire.” His voice was so soft, it cracked into a whisper, startling him. “I love you. So much.” The weight of his words settled between them like a promise, like an anchor. “I don’t know when it started, but I think I have for a very long time.” Her eyes stayed locked on his as her arms came to drape over his shoulders, her fingers interlocking behind his head. “So I guess what I’m sayin’ is,” he paused, raising a hand to cradle her blushing cheek. “I’m yours, if you’ll have me.”

There was no hesitation from her. She used her hands behind his head to draw his face up to hers, kissing him hungrily with her sweet, brown-sugar lips. Brad laughed joyfully into her mouth, his heart thumping wildly in relief as he kissed her back in earnest. At the feeling of her knees squeezing his hips as she wrapped her legs around him, he groaned. 

Finally.

_Finally._

‘You’re gonna kill me, woman,” he growled, his hands snaking under her sweater and exploring the warm, smooth skin of her waist.

She smiled into his kiss, bumping the tip of her nose against his and cradling his head in her hands. 

A sudden creak from behind them made Brad nearly jump out of his skin. He heard a high-pitched whine from the back of Claire’s throat. She’d startled viscerally, her hands hiding her face.

“I fucking _called_ it,” Morocco said, somewhat smugly, standing in the doorway with a hand on the old wooden frame. He smiled at them conspiratorially. “Time to go get everyone else to pay up.”

“Chris, you guys _bet_ on us?” Claire screeched from beside him, her hands now spread wide in disbelief.

“Easy money,” Morocco rubbed his fingers together. “Carry on,” he waved his hand at them encouragingly before turning on his heel to return to his betting-mates.

Alone again, the tension that had been building in them now broken, Brad and Claire burst into laughter, collapsing in on each other. 

“I don’t know how I’m gonna go in there and face them all now,” Claire choked between giggles, leaning her head on his shoulder. 

“Only one witness. We still have plausible deniability,” Brad shrugged.

“Do I even want to deny it, though?” Claire asked lightly, lifting her head to meet his eyes. “Maybe I don’t.”

“I’ll go in there first and whip everyone into shape,” Brad offered, tracing her hairline with his fingers. There was so much of Claire that he could touch now that he’d never been able to before -- the softness of her hair, the pale skin below her jaw, the fullness of her lips. He was intoxicated.

“You’re the best, really,” she grinned, pressing another kiss onto his waiting lips. “I’m gonna have another cookie and be right there, yeah?”

He nodded, forcing himself to let go of her and step away. If he’d felt drawn to her before, like a planet in orbit, now they were magnets, deeply attached and nearly impossible to separate. 

“Hey Brad,” she called to his retreating back. He turned, watching her still sitting, still swinging her feet gently back and forth. “I love you too.”

His heart swelled to a near-bursting point as he stumbled into the other room. 

  
  


#  _Winter, 2021_

Claire watched the playback of her latest video, Matt letting her have a final look before he uploaded it online. She skimmed through it, checking for any post-production inaccuracies.

She’d finally escaped the cyclical torture of recreating hard candies and stretching endless taffy. Now, the gig she had was so much better.

She was creating her own line of snacks.

This week’s upload featured her cherry almond slices, which would hit shelves a few weeks after the video went live. 

“Wait, Matt,” she called to him from the other side of the counter, waving him over. “This caption right here, it needs to be changed.”

Matt squinted at the screen. “What’s wrong with it, did I misspell something?”

A smile crept onto Claire’s face. “In a way.”

He looked at her, nonplussed. 

“Change my title to ‘Claire Saffitz-Leone’ here. It’ll be accurate by the time this is released.” Turning her head to the station behind her, she searched for Brad’s gaze and immediately met it.

He’d already been looking.

Her heart leapt to her throat.

“Saffitz-Leone, got it?” She repeated. 

  
  



End file.
